https://at-ceu.studyguide.timeedit.net/modules/UGST4257?type=CORECourse Description:Empires have long occupieda dominant place in the international order. They interacted with-andprofoundly shaped-one another, exerted lasting influence on the lives of thevast majority of the world's population, and left enduring marks on culturesand civilizations across the globe. To study empires is therefore to engagewith a core, shared dimension of world history. In recent decades, however, thesocial sciences and humanities have witnessed renewed debate about therelevance of empire as a category of analysis. The current phase ofglobalization-raising questions about the future of the nation-state-hascontributed to what has been termed the "imperial turn" in historiography.This course introduces major contemporary theories for the study ofempire and compares the structures, practices, and ideologies of differentimperial formations. We will address a series of guiding questions: How wereempires built, administered, and maintained? What ideological frameworks andstrategies of legitimation did they employ? On which social networks did theyrely to govern, and what criteria-religion, language, education,ethnicity-shaped inclusion and exclusion? How did gendered hierarchies informimperial governance and notions of order? What roles did coercive force and itsagents play in sustaining vast territories and enforcing monarchicalprerogatives? How did various legal regimes mediate and legitimate power withinimperial settings? In what ways did environment, climate, and disease shapeimperial trajectories-and how did empires, in turn, reshape their environments?How did autocratic structures and ideologies adapt to local social and culturalrealities "on the ground"? Finally, what forms of imperial legacy remainvisible today, and how is the concept of empire mobilized in contemporarypolitical discourse across different regions of the world?