The Master's program "Atlantic Studies" is the only program in Germany that deals with the social, cultural, political and economic relations in the South Atlantic from an interdisciplinary perspective of the humanities and social sciences. Against the backdrop of historical and contemporary globalization processes and migrations, the program focuses on interconnections between the three continents around the Atlantic.
The Master's program "Atlantic Studies" is the only program in Germany that deals with the social, cultural, political and economic relations in the South Atlantic from an interdisciplinary perspective of the humanities and social sciences. Against the backdrop of historical and contemporary globalization processes and migrations, the program focuses on interconnections between the three continents around the Atlantic.
The Master's program Atlantic Studies in History, Culture and Society is based on a new concept in the German and international university landscape, which deliberately transcends existing disciplinary boundaries. Against the backdrop of historical and contemporary globalization processes and migrations, it places the interconnections between the three continents around the Atlantic in the foreground of teaching and research and overcomes traditional nation-state perspectives. The Master's program focuses not only on the interactions between Europe and North America, but comprehensively addresses the relationships between Africa, the Americas (especially Latin America and the Caribbean), and Europe, the localization of global processes, and the continuing specificities of developments in the various regions of the world. Special emphasis is placed on the South Atlantic region because of Hanover's unique combination of African History (one of five professorships in Germany) and Latin American History and expertise on both continents in the literary and social sciences.
Students learn to examine social phenomena from different perspectives and to work inter- and transdisciplinarily as well as comparatively. The current debate on globalization is strongly influenced by approaches from economics and political science, which focus primarily on contemporary social macro processes and the level of formal institutions. In contrast, the M.A. Atlantic Studies combines a decidedly comparative and historical perspective with a stronger consideration of informal structures, processes on the middle and micro levels, and cultural patterns of interpretation of the actors.
The M.A. Atlantic Studies in History, Culture and Society combines approaches from global history and historical anthropology, cultural studies-oriented literary studies, the sociology of development, and cultural anthropology with more recent perspectives in gender and inequality studies. It is distinguished, among other things, by its interdisciplinarity and its joint consideration of the regions of Africa, the Americas (especially Latin America and the Caribbean), and Europe. However, these regions are not viewed as standing side by side, as in area studies, but are addressed in their interconnections with one another. Europe is no longer used as an explicit or implicit yardstick for the other parts of the world. Rather, the interconnectedness of developments here with overseas expansion processes since the early modern period is made visible.
The topics and considerations mentioned here are part of research projects of the Centre for Atlantic and Global Studies at Leibniz University and their findings are directly transferred into the teaching of the course.
