Ideas in Action: Decolonization in World History

Catalog description

This seminar explores the intellectual history of decolonization, the multifaceted process marked by the collapse of longstanding European empires and the emergence of independent nation-states in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean in the mid-twentieth century. The central assumption of intellectual history is that ideas are key drivers of historical change. Conventional intellectual history courses engage with a narrow canon of European thinkers. This course approaches key figures from the colonial and postcolonial world, such as Gandhi and Fanon, as important ideological innovators integral to world history. Our main concern will be the intellectual ferment inaugurated as colonized peoples sought first to make sense of colonialism and then debated the meaning of, and means of achieving, freedom and liberation.