Teaching
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My scholarly training in Global and World History extends into my work as a Graduate Student Instructor in the History Department at the University of Michigan. I taught and designed undergraduate classes in global economic and political history through the regional lens of Eastern Europe (“Poland in the Modern World”) and environmental history (“Garbage in the Modern World”). My goal was to familiarize students from different academic backgrounds with a wide range of historical concepts, help sharpen their critical thinking skills, and nourish a culture of informed debate in the classroom. To facilitate classroom education, I incorporated pedagogical methods ranging from interactive learning, peer reviews, project-based activities to "traditional" writing assignments with extensive instructor feedback.
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An essential part of my training at Michigan involved teaching the History Department’s survey course “Modern World History since 1450." This class explored how capitalism integrated the world’s various regions culturally, economically, and politically over the course of 500 years. Students learned to see the world as interrelated, develop causal explanations for historical events, and identify distinct time periods as well as the changes and continuities between them. This holistic view of the world's past brought into sharp relief moments of global convergence (as well as divergence) that sparked transformative, if often uneven, historical change in the modern period.
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Teaching Keywords Borders, Bodies, Class, Culture, Democracy, Economic Life, Empire, Environment, Ethics, Equality and Justice, Gender, Glocalism, Humanitarianism, Human Rights, Materiality, Migration, Nations, Networks, Politics, Race, Sexuality, State, Society. |
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This course introduces students to key debates in the field of humanitarianism: How is distant suffering represented and acted upon by humanitarian practitioners and a broader global public? How are power relations negotiated between donors and recipients? What role do faith-based charities and their particular world views play in the rehabilitation of victims of violence and the poor? How is moral personhood constituted through volunteer work? And how are ethical values linked to human compassion, and vice versa? Global history offers a particularly salient conceptual framework to come to grips with the different iterations, shifting meanings, and varying practices of humanitarianism across cultural and geographic space. While this course is situated in History, it also seeks to attract students who may pursue careers in international aid, government, public policy, social work, and the broader non-profit sector. The goal of this course is to expose students to the practice of university-level writing and to familiarize them with the most relevant scholarship on humanitarianism. The course material encourages constructive classroom discussions on such topics as socialist conceptions of charity, critiques of a new Western humanitarian imperialism, and the problematic nature of "dark tourism" or “voluntourism,” among others. A variety of source material ranging from academic articles, book chapters, and novels to online newspaper articles, TED talks, podcasts, and new media such as Twitter and Instagram engages these questions. In the final part of this class, students develop their own prescriptions for improving humanitarianism by mobilizing course material as well as external sources in group projects. |
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ccapotes@umich.edu
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Phone |
(734) 764 6305 (Dept)
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Address |
University of Michigan
Department of History 1029 Tisch Hall 435 South State Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003 |
© 2018 Cristian Capotescu
Photo Credits Dimitris Michalakis
Photo Credits Dimitris Michalakis
