Weekly topics
Week 1
6/30 Lecture: Introduction: migration and identity in history; sources and methods
7/01 Discussion: Review syllabus and key terms
Yannis Stouraitis, “Migrating in the medieval East Roman world, ca 600-1204,” in Migration Histories of the Medieval Afroeurasian Transition Zone. Aspects of Mobility between Africa, Asia and Europe, 300-1500 C. E. (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 141-165.
Questions: What is migration? What is identity? How do you think the two are related? On what sources can one draw to study the migration in the past? What kinds of migration may be identified in the historical record?
UNIT 1: WARS, DISPLACEMENT, PERSECUTION, AND GENOCIDE
7/02 Lecture: Wars caused by migration: Adrianople (378) and Isandlwana (1879)
7/03 Lecture: Migration caused by wars: the “refugee problem”
7/04 Independence Day – no classes
Week 2
7/07 Lecture: Displaced persons: from the Albigensian Crusade to World War II
7/08 Discussion: Megan Cassidy-Welch, “Refugees: views from thirteenth-century France,” in Why the Middle Ages Matter. Medieval Light on Modern Injustice, edited by Celia L. Chazelle, Simon Doubleday, Felice Lifshitz, and Amy G. Remensnyder (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), pp. 141-153; Mark Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945-51 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 86-105
Primary source analysis workshop: Niketas Choniates, “Fleeing with family from Constantinople after the sack of 1204 by the crusaders,” in Mobility and Migration in Byzantium: a Sourcebook, edited by Claudia Rapp et al. (Vienna: Vienna University Press, 2023), pp. 42-47
Questions: How are individual and group identities been shaped and reshaped by forced mobility? What role did religion play in displacement? How did social and political networks contribute to the survival of refugees? What are the differences between refugees, stateless people, and internally displaced people?
7/09 Deportations: the politics of forced migrations
7/10 Religious persecution and migration: Armenians and Jews
7/11: Discussion: Lukas de Blois, “Invasions, deportations, and repopulation. Mobility and migration in Thrace, Moesia Inferior, and Dacia in the third quarter of the third century AD,” in The Imapct of Mobility and Migration in the Roman Empire. Proceedings of the Twelfth Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire (Rome, June 17-19, 2015), edited by Mirian J. Groen-Vallinga, Elio Lo Cascio, and Laurens E. Tacoma, Impact of Empire, 22 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2017), pp. 42-54; Michael Gelb, “An early Soviet ethnic deportation: the Far-Eastern Koreans,” Russian Review 54 (1995), no. 3, 389-412; State Defense Committee Decree no. 5859ss, May 11, 1944
Questions: What are the reasons invoked for the displacement of entire groups of population and their forced movement elsewhere? What is the relation between deportations and ethnic cleansing? Are there any differences between the power of the ancient (Roman) and modern (Soviet) state over groups of population on its territory? What are the implications of deportation for group identity?
Week 3
7/14 Ethnic identity and the afterlives of genocide
7/15 Discussion: Gilles Courtieu, “Asia 88 BC: a landmark in genocide history,” Anatolica 45 (2019), 29-41; Marie Beatrice Umutesi, Surviving the Slaughter. The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), pp. xi-xvi, 1-44.
Questions: What is the difference between genocide and ethnic cleansing? What are the histories of migration and refuge-seeking in East Africa? How do those histories square with the classifications and statistics of international aid organizations? What are the politics of refugee-seeking?
UNIT 2: SLAVERY, EMPIRES, EXPULSIONS, AND DIASPORAS
7/16 Lecture: Cartography and identity; GIS and story maps
7/17 Lecture: Empires and migrations: free people moving inside empires
7/18 Discussion: Digital mapping workshop.
https://learn.arcgis.com/en/projects/share-the-story-of-an-expedition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVPUQTRrdfU
Questions: How does thinking spatially help one conceptualize the impacts of migration? Is it possible to map identity?
Week 4
7/21 Lecture: Nomads and empires
7/22 Discussion: Alexander Beihammer, “Patterns of Turkish migration and expansion in Byzantine Asia Minor in the 11th and 12th centuries,” in Migration Histories of the Medieval Afroeurasian Transition Zone. Aspects of Mobility between Africa, Asia and Europe, 300-1500 C. E. (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 166-192; Emre Teğin, “Disruption of pastoral nomadism: the impacts of Russian colonialism on the Kazakh steppe during the 19th and 20th centuries,” Bilig (2024), no. 11: 29-53.
Questions: What are the differences between nomadism and migration? What is relation between imperial policies and nomadism? Do borders matter to nomads? How is the local population displaced by newcomers?
7/23: Lecture: Famine and migration: Irish identities in North America
Film: “Ireland’s Great Hunger and the Irish Diaspora” (50 mins.)
7/24: Lecture: Slavery and migration: the Transatlantic slave trade
Film: “Shackles of memory: the Atlantic slave trade” (55 min.)
7/25 Discussion: James S. Donnelly Jr., “The construction of the memory of the famine in Ireland and the Irish diaspora, 1850-1900,” Éire-Ireland 31 (1996), nos. 1-2, 26-61; Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks. The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1998), pp. 114-134; a letter from Patt and Cathorine McGowan to Brother Roger, December 25, 1847; explore Slave Voyages (https://www.slavevoyages.org/american/database)
Questions: When and how did Irish people become American? How have contemporary Irish politics been shaped by the famine and subsequent migrations? How did enslaved Africans recreate and adapt language, religion, and other cultural institutions? What are the legacies of African identities in the Americas?
ASSIGNMENT #1 DUE
Week 5
7/28 Lecture: Diasporas with and without empires.
7/29 Discussion: Greg Woolf, “Empires, diasporas, and the emergence of religions,” in Christianity in the Second Century. Themes and Development, edited by James Carleton Paget and Judith Lieu (Cambridge” Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 25-38; Paulina Niechciał, “Contemporary Zoroastrians between integration and misunderstandings,” Anthropos 115 (2020), 9-18; choose an interview from Migration to New Worlds (https://www-migration-amdigital-co-uk.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/Links to an external site.) or the SPOHP Digital Collection (https://ufdc.ufl.edu/oralLinks to an external site.)
Questions: What is the role of religion in migration? What constitutes a diaspora, and how are diasporic communities different from refugees? What is oral history? How are oral sources different from written sources? On what methods do oral historians rely?
7/30 Lecture: Expulsion in response to immigration
Film: “Expulsion, Canadian experience” (44 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V8BSlD88fA
UNIT 3: ACROSS LINES AND BORDERS
7/31 Lecture: Water borders: migration to islands
8/01 Discussion: Davide Zori, Age of Wolf and Wind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024), pp. 309-322; Hiroshi Takayama, “Migrations in the Mediterranean area and the Far East: medieval Sicily and Japan,” in Europa im Geflecht der Welt: mittelalterliche Migrationen in globalen Bezügen, edited by Michael Borgolte, Julia Dücker, Marcel Müllerburg, Paul Predatsch, and Bernd Schneimüller, Abhandlungen und Beiträge zur historischen Komparatistik, 20 (Berlin: Akadamie Verlag, 2012), pp. 217-229; Isledingabók on the settlement of Iceland
Questions: What moved the Norse settlers to Iceland? What forms of social organization they developed upon arrival? What is the relationship between an island and the mainland from which the settlers came? How does the story of the Norse settlement of Iceland challenge the understanding of ancient and modern migrations? Why isn’t here any episode of mass migration in the medieval and modern history of Japan? What are the politics of settling islands?
ASSIGNMENT #2 DUE
Week 6
8/04 Lecture: Voluntary migration and expats
8/05 Analytic writing workshop
Questions: Who are you? Where are you from? Where are you going?
8/06 Lecture: Across ethnic lines: German emigrants to Europe and America
8/07 Lecture: Migration and hope in a changing world
8/08 Discussion: Matthias Hardt, “Migrants in high medieval Bohemia,” Journal of Medieval History 45 (2019), no. 3, 380-388; Georg Fertig, “Transatlantic migration from the German-speaking parts of Central Europe, 1600-1800: proportions, structures, and explanations,” in Europeans on the Move. Studies on European Migration, 1500-1800, edited by Nicholas Canny (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 192-235; a letter of Pastor Frank to his daughter, Sophie, May 15, 1852
Questions: How do the social structures of the German-speaking immigrants of the modern period compare with those of the medieval German-speaking immigrants? What social problems emerged from the migration, and what solutions were offered in the two periods?
ASSIGNMENT #3 DUE