DHIS 27A30 - Perspectives of counterfactual history: from 1521 to 2024

Counterfactual history is a form of historiography that attempts to answer the “What if…?” questions that arise from conditional statements, and it is linked (somewhat controversially for some historians) to the literary genre of “alternate history”. The purpose of this course is to study different facets of counterfactual history, from its usefulness in studying history or analyzing geopolitics to our relationship to fiction as part as a playful exercise. It will allow us to work on the concepts of causality, determinism and even objective truth (or “fact checking”). First, we will explain the different uses of counterfactual history, then we will implement its approaches to explore during each session different “tipping points” and possible “future pasts”, all the while confronting ourselves to epistemological issues (and probably the merits and flaws of group thinking).

An oral presentation (group work) about a “tipping point” during one of the seminars (40%)

An individual final take-home exam consisting in a case study of counterfactual history (40%)

Class participation 20%