Please note! For this minor and its courses a restricted number of places are available.
Enrollment takes place through a Selection Committee, which means you can only register for the course and the minor within the first four days of the course registration period (Monday – Thursday 16.00 hrs).  The Selection Committee decides whether or not you can enroll. More information about registration can be found here. 

In 2015, there will be 2 opportunities to participate in a History course taught by International guests.

In block 3 the International Guest course will be taught by prof. dr. Siep Stuurman and Devin Vartija:
 

Equality and Cultural Difference in Enlightenment Thought
Equality is of central importance in modern times, as it continues to fuel fierce debates surrounding social and economic policies the world over. But what are the origins of the modern idea of equality? Through a close reading of texts from antiquity and the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, this course aims to cover how Western concepts of equality and cultural difference are reinvented in different times and places. Ancient Greek and Judaeo-Christian ideas of common humanity are discussed to put the novelty of Enlightenment notions of temporality and universal equality in a long-term historical perspective.
The course also offers an introduction into the methodologies of intellectual history. In weekly assignments students will acquire a practical and operational insight in the hermeneutics of intellectual history.

In block 4 the International Guest Course will be taught by prof. Bin Wong, distinguished Professor of History at UCLA (For more information, see http://www.history.ucla.edu/people/faculty/faculty-1/faculty-1?lid=298):
 

Governance in Chinese History
Political Thought and Practice from the Formation of Empire to the Evolution of a National State
 China has a very long history of political philosophy with Confucius predating Aristotle and Plato.  The country also had more than a millennium of bureaucratic administration before comparable European institutions were conceived.  Yet, historians do not pay Chinese political philosophy and policy making the kind of attention typically shown to European traditions.  Modern scholarship on Chinese philosophy stresses the individual’s self-cultivation and moral development, while historians of twentieth-century China typically accept a cultural rupture between Confucian traditions and modern political beliefs.

 
This course begins with consideration of classical Chinese principles for creating political order, traces how these ideas were translated into policies and practices in subsequent centuries, and evaluates the ways in which contemporary Chinese intellectuals perceive that history of governance to find inspiration for future political possibilities or, more commonly, to provide evidence of the historical burdens they bear.  Students will write two essays, one from the perspective of classical Chinese political concerns and one in which those concerns are expressed in a contemporary global context in order to understand the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western approaches to governance.