(Not offered in 2022)

Convener: Associate Professor A Mendelsohn

Course entry requirements: Acceptance for a master's programme.

This course explores the impact of modernity on the modern world through close examination of the experience of minority groups. This approach allows both for a clearer understanding of some of the key features of modernity, and for investigation of how minorities have formed and fared in different state formations at different moments in time. The course introduces students to the theoretical approaches and nomenclature developed in different disciplines to describe and categorize minorities, and interrogates the language and typologies used within academia and public discourse. Given the centrality of contingent and contextual factors in understanding the position of minorities in different societies, much of the course will explore case studies chosen to highlight the impact of place, politics, and change over time on the experience of minority groups. Seminar themes will include Minorities within Pre-Modernity; the nation and nationalism and the place of outsiders; Migration, Migrants and Race; Migrant minorities and the importance of historical context; Globalization, Transnationalism, Diaspora ; Multiculturalism, Cosmopolitanism and Citizenship; Historicizing Pluralism, Multiculturalism, and Human Rights; and Challenges to Multiculturalism and Pluralism.