Global and Regional History (St. Petersburg) HSE University

Overview

This two-year course grounds students in the vibrant field of global history through a regional focus on Russian, former Soviet and Eurasian spaces, and a possibility to major in history or anthropology. How do these area studies' cases benefit from the global history paradigm and its key current debates? How does in turn its classic problematic of modern empires and critiques of Eurocentrism benefit from Eurasian regional material, historical and anthropological perspectives and the emerging engagement with the questions of the anthropocene, histories of gender and economy, studies of science and technology, and religion and secularism? How do history and anthropology balance these disciplines' fundamental commitment to exploring societies and cultures, and historical processes from below and the emphasis on translocal and global interconnections and hierarchies?

These questions underpin this programme's core seminars in theory and methodology as well as a broad array of regional courses. These range from the history of St. Petersburg to that of personality cults of the 20th century, the Cold War, imperial crossroads in Eurasia and the Caucasus.

Master students form their curricula and research projects on the basis of a wide methodological spectrum of global history, social anthropology (ethnography), art history, digital and visual methods. Students choose disciplines from the list offered within the two learning paths (majors) 'history' and 'social anthropology'. The choice of taught subjects depends on the ​​interests and, specifically, topics of MA research projects of each student; this choice is normally done in consultation with the students' supervisors of their MA research and the tutors of the two majors.

Accreditation

State Accreditation