220112 History of space and spaces of history. Theories and Practises of space in historical context and in historiography (S) (SoSe 2018)

Space is trend. During the last three decades, the social sciences have witnessed a profound „return of space“ (Osterhammel) into the categories of research in the social, cultural and historical sciences as much as the humanities – the notorious spatial turn. Although arguably it has been overhauled by a staggering number of further ‚turns‘, researchers still find themselves confronted to spatial analyses everywhere: spaces of narration, spaces of representation, social spaces, safe spaces, heterotopous spaces, …, to name but a few of the recent „spatial formats“ (Rao) in research, many of which share, at best, a vague congruence in their formulation and theoretical background.
This plethora of operationalisations of the central category of space begs clarification: what is space conceived of as, and by whom? What explanatory role is it assigned in what research traditions? Is it justified to speak of one spatial turn? What other modes of analysis is the spatial opposed to or combined with?
The seminar will aim to provide an introductory overview on the most important lines of argument and a number of key concepts in current research on space. To this end, we will begin by discussing ‘classical’ concepts of space (in its relation to time), most markedly in physics, geography and historiography, in order to be able to understand the transformations that a thorough reformulation of spatial analyses in the humanities and cultural / social sciences has aimed to bring about.
The latter part of the seminar will then aim to apply some of these approaches to space by means of exploring the different spaces used in historical research. Thus, questions of nation-states and their relation to globality can be addressed as spatial units of making history as much as a museum, an image, a map, a discourse, or flows of goods and knowledge.

Bibliography

Class materials will be distributed at the beginning of the seminar. Students wishing to gain an overview over some key concepts may consult:
Mike Crang; Nigel Thrift (eds.) (2000): Thinking Space. New York, London: Routledge. – Introduction chapter in particular
Günzel, Stephan; Kümmerling, Franziska (Hg.) (2011): Raum. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch. Stuttgart: Metzler. – For a broad and detailed Overview in german.