New TNH Courses for Spring 2027: Internationalisms, Violent Pasts, and the Presence of History Today
In the Spring Semester 2027, the MA program Transnational History (TNH) will expand its course offerings with two new seminars that reflect the program’s focus on historical processes crossing national, state, and cultural boundaries. Both courses will help students explore how the past remains relevant for understanding present‑day debates and conflicts.
Prof. Sandrine Kott, an internationally renowned scholar of transnational history and guest professor at the Institute of International Studies, will offer the seminar European Internationalisms in the 20th Century in the module Actors and Power in Global Politics. The seminar examines the rise, transformation, and decline of European‑led internationalisms in the twentieth century. It focuses on liberal, communist, and other internationalist projects from the age of nation‑states and the aftermath of World War I to the Cold War and the rise of globalism. The course asks how internationalist movements and organizations shaped global politics, and how Europe’s role within them changed over time.
Dr. Rachel O’Sullivan, postdoctoral researcher at IMS, will teach the seminar Confronting Violent Pasts: Remembering Genocide, the Holocaust, and Colonialism Today in the module Past and Present. The seminar explores how contemporary societies confront difficult histories of genocide, the Holocaust, and colonial violence. It asks how these histories are compared, connected, or kept apart, and why debates about the past often become politically sensitive. Through selected texts and case studies, students will examine how difficult pasts continue to shape contemporary political, social, and cultural life.
Together, these new courses further strengthen the TNH program’s commitment to transnational perspectives and to connecting historical research with the pressing questions of the present.
