Seminar Questions

1. What problems does periodisation present for global historians?
2. Is periodisation Eurocentric?
3. How did the ‘Middle Ages’ differ around the world?
4. How has time varied across the world?
5. Is ‘modernity’ a global category?
6. How significant is the difference between the Christian and Islamic calendars?

Core Readings

• Bashir, Shahzad, ‘On Islamic Time: Rethinking Chronology in the Historiography of Muslim Societies’, History and Theory, 53 (2014): 519-544.
• Davis, Kathleen, Periodization and Sovereignty, How Ideas of Feudalism & Secularization Govern the Politics of Time (Philadelphia, 2008).
• Dagenais, John. ‘The Postcolonial Laura’, Modern Language Quarterly 65, no. 3 (2004), 365-389.
• Davis, Kathleen and Altschul, Nadia, eds, Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World: The Idea of the “Middle Ages” Outside Europe (Baltimore, 2009).
• Eisenstadt, S. N., ‘Multiple Modernities’, Daedalus, 129/1 (2000), pp. 1-29.
• Göle, Nilüfer, ‘Snapshots of Islamic Modernities', Daedalus, 129/1 (2000), pp. 91-117.
• Thompson, E. P., Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism, Past & Present, 38 (1967), 56-97.

Supplementary Readings

Chun-chieh Huang and Zürcher, Erik, Time and Space in Chinese Culture (Leiden-New York-Köln, 1995).

Fabian, Johannes, Time and the other: how anthropology makes its object (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).

Oliver, Roland, Medieval Africa, 1250-1800 (Cambridge, 2001).

Stray, Geoff, The Mayan and Other Ancient Calendars (New York, 2007).

Symes, Carol, ‘When We Talk about Modernity’, The American Historical Review, 116/3 (2011), pp. 715-726.