This one-term module introduces students to the long history of global interactions between different parts of the world through a focus on early connections in the period 1200-1500. By following the circulation of people, knowledge, religion, and goods in the late medieval world, this module compares regions from the Mediterranean and Islamic world to India and China. The module will be set within the theoretical framework of global history, a new(ish) approach which Warwick has been at the forefront of developing. As a team-taught module, Caravans and Traders draws on the wide range of global history expertise represented at Warwick's Global History and Culture CentreLink opens in a new window. Topics include diasporas, material culture, Islamic states and empires, the silk roads, global cities, and medieval travellers. You will also work with a range of medieval sources, including travel accounts, commercial letters, and maps.
You are being watched and measured. And you are not alone. For over a century, a global web of state, commercial, and individual surveillance has observed and measured an ever-widening variety of bodies, situations, and spaces. As our bodies have become legible to authorities and to ourselves, they have come to serve as identity documents, markers of kinship, and signs of entitlement or otherness. This module will explore the ways in which new ideas, knowledge and technologies have enabled states, societies and individuals to identify and assess their citizens, police their borders, and generate self-knowledge. From the invention of the ‘average man’ in the 19th century to the rise of home DNA testing kits and biometric passports, we will look at what it means to ‘measure up’ in modern society, and ask: how, when and where should our bodies be subjected to measurement, by whom, and for what purposes? Case studies will include fingerprinting, DNA profiling, and the all-too-familiar bathroom scale; others will be selected by students. Read more about our seminar topics here.
SEMINARS: Seminar groups will meet on Thursdays either from 9:00-11:00 or from 11:00-13:00 in FAB 3.25.