New course for Spring 2026: Global Connections (HISTORY 790S)

The field of global history is a successor to the older idea of ‘world history’ which tended to describe or compare different empires or polities. Global connections, especially since the advent of navigation and conquest around the world after 1500, considers its themes more interactively—where developments in one part of the world have systemic effects on other parts because of their interconnections. 

The more recent idea of ‘planetary history’ explores the impact of human societies on other humans, non-human agents and ‘earth systems’ generally. How have long-term and accelerating activities of extraction of nature and labor and the construction of a gigantic technosphere of human-made structures such as houses, factories, airports, computers and landfill weighing some 30 trillion tons and supporting a human biomass that is five orders of magnitude smaller (Zalasiewicz et al., 2017, p. 19) evolved historically to lead to our present condition?

The course has an Asian orientation although it also considers global developments in other parts of the world.  The goal is to familiarize ourselves with some of the most important questions and debates in global history. Familiarity with these problems will become increasingly important as historians and others seek to understand local or even national problems in the wider context. How do some local problems reveal an often-obscured circulatory dimension? We will probe emergent methodologies and themes in the local/global/planetary nexus.

We will read about 11-12 books (plus an article or two) over the term with thematic foci. Topics considered are historical problems of modern state-formation, the articulation of capital and local systems, circulatory cultural, religious and intellectual history, the environment and earth systems theory. We will seek to evaluate how the studies integrate these problems and the extent to which they succeed in revealing modes of two-way local-global transformations. 

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Instructor: Prasenjit Duara

The course is scheduled to meet on Wednesdays, 1:40–4:10. 

Confirm all dates, times, and locations in DukeHub.

General Course Requirements

The course is open to undergraduates with permission from the instructor. They will be graded separately from the graduate students and will write a shorter final paper. All else will be the same. 

Each week, students will write 2-3 paragraphs about the readings for the week and submit them to the discussion section in Canvas at least an hour before class. Additionally, each week, two students will present, in consultation with each other, different dimensions or themes in the reading for 10-15 minutes each. These will be more in depth than the 2-3 paragraph commentaries. The presenters should post their longer form presentations after the discussion for the class (on Canvas) and everyone is encouraged to exchange their views on the topic later as well. 

After the initial presentations, the professor will elaborate on the relevant themes and give more historical background of the problems.  Subsequently, there will be a general class discussion and then a final round-up by the professor which will also introduce links to the next seminar. The goal of each presentation is to enhance analytical thinking and writing. The role of these discussions is to both deepen understanding of particular problems and gain a broader perspective of the historical trends.

A final research paper of 15-20 pages will be expected before the end of exam week. An extended research proposal (5-7 pages) that explains your research problem in some detail, discusses the relevant secondary literature, and lists the (locally accessible) primary sources should be submitted before mid-term. The final paper should explore a topic (ideally) related to your research interest and which seeks to reveal its global connections or relevance.