Authoritarianism 101: A Global History

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course seeks to understand our present moment by examining the political, economic, social and cultural histories of authoritarianism. It focuses on a set of primary source-based modules that explore authoritarian turns from the sixteenth to the late twentieth centuries across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas. These modules were developed in collaboration with more than 30 leading historians of authoritarianism, some of whom will join us for our discussions, as part of a major project to be published in the American Historical Review later in 2026. They draw on textual and visual sources to excavate a variety of exemplary historical cases around the rise of authoritarianism; its everyday practices; and forms of collaboration and resistance to authoritarian regimes in civil society. Students will also engage with seminal novels, films and other forms of cultural production that address central aspects of authoritarian rule. The capstone project for the course will bring teams of students together to create and teach their own modules on authoritarian history.