Global Time (Julia McClure)
Seminar Questions
- What problems does periodisation present for global historians?
- Is periodisation Eurocentric?
- How did the ‘Middle Ages’ differ around the world?
- How has time varied across the world?
- Is ‘modernity’ a global category?
- 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.