A Global Idea: Civilization(s)

This seminar explores a global history perspective to the idea of civilization since the eighteenth century. Starting from the view that the Enlightenment was a specifically European phenomenon, a foundational premise of Western modernity, we explore how the master narrative around ‘civilization’ developed and crystallized through universal history and world history into today’s global history. Analyzing the making of this global idea includes topics like the politics of knowledge production, and transnational exchanges of ideas and practices of progress, nationalism, periodization, and intertextuality in the West, Ottoman Empire and others.