https://at-ceu.studyguide.timeedit.net/modules/UGST4156?type=CORECourse Description: This course is designed to introduce students to methodological and theoretical approaches to cultural history and everyday life experience and apply these approaches to much larger social concerns revolving around the study of empires and their aftermaths. Until recently, the study of economic, "hard-data" tabulation-types of history, grand concepts such modernity, progress, and reform vs. break-away nationalisms, traditional political histories of powerful men, or diplomatic/military histories dominated research agendas of historians working on empire. The real-life practices of the countless millions were relegated to nebulous social science models and paradigms. Macro-studies and theses that explain social relationships and struggles between the state vs. the rest of society dominated - and still dominate - historiography, yet many of these studies are not based on creative approaches to primary sources that can be used to reconstruct the practices, sentiments, behavior, and world-views of actual historical actors outside of imperial palaces and the halls of governance. 'Small peoples" of empire were-and are often still-ignored or silenced (especially if they were unruly) by elite officials, chroniclers and, consequently, by modern historians as well.