Introducing the FUS Faculty: Marcus Pyka

Associate Professor, History

Ph.D. Ludwigs Maximilians Universität München, Germany
M.A. Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms Universität Bonn, Germany

Office: Lowerre Academic Center, Office 12
Phone: +41 91 986 36 37
Email: mpyka@fus.edu

His research interests focus on questions of identity building. In his book Heinrich Graetz – Jewish Identity and Historiography (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Publishers, 2008), he addressed the construction of Jewish identity by means of historiography in 19th century Germany. He has received research fellowships from the German National Academic Foundation, the Institute for European History (Mainz/Germany), and Harvard University, among others. Current research focuses on the use of morality and of religious values for identity politics, both with regard to modern Bourgeoisie and the modern understanding of “Europe”. His teaching experience includes world history and world religions, with a focus on Judaism from the Biblical Times onwards, the Islamic world, India, and the West.

2024-2025 Courses

HIS 104	Global History I: Traditions, Encounters, and Adaptation from the Stone Age to the 16th Century	FALL 2024
This course is an introduction to themes and trends in the political, economic, cultural, and social, history of pre-modern societies in global perspective. It covers the development of civilizations in Eurasia, Africa and the Americas from the Neolithic Revolution to the "Columbian Exchange" with emphasis on the emergence and diffusion of religious and political institutions, the role of the environmental context, as well as the impact of encounters between human societies. Students are introduced to the historiography of empire and global history/globalization, and attention is devoted to the reading and analysis of different categories of primary sources.
HIS 215T	Central Europe: An Urban History	FALL 2024
This Academic Travel course seeks to explore urban development and urban planning of Central European cities from Antiquity to the Present. The course investigates the specific development of cities in Central Europe, both north and south of the Alps, with an emphasis on the legacies of Roman antiquity, the Christian (and Jewish) legacy of the Middle Ages, the role of princely residences, and of bourgeois middle classes. An important part plays also the various political movements of the 20th century, including the architectural fantasies of National Socialism, and the attempts post-World War II to deal with this legacy in a democratic society. The course asks in which way the interplay of tradition and modernity over time has structured not only the physical shapes of cities, but even the mindsets of the population. The travel component of this course features day trips to the Roman foundation of Como (Italy) and the oldest still standing structure in Switzerland in Riva San Vitale (Ticino), and a major excursion to the three most important cities in Bavaria: Nuremberg, Regensburg, and Munich (Germany).
HIS 347W	Treason Accusations. History of a Political Tool	FALL 2024
Treason is one of the most powerful accusations in the Western political discourse. In recent years, similar to previous times of crisis, it became widely used within political discourse. At the same time, the term has different meanings in different languages, and some cultures do not even have one specific concept for the same stigma. In order to understand the wide-spread use in contemporary discourse, this course explores the development of the accusation through the ages: the emergence as a concept out of very specific circumstances, the development of distinct conceptions in Roman and Germanic law, and the mechanisms and consequences of the merger of these conceptions that went hand in hand with the rise of the modern state and in particular its usage in nationalist and populist discourses nowadays.(This writing-intensive course counts towards the Academic Writing requirements.)
HIS 447	Treason Accusations (Capstone)	FALL 2024
Students in their Senior year who wish to graduate with a Major in History (stand alone or combined) need to take this capstone version of HIS 347 (see course description). Students in HIS 447 attend all meetings of HIS 347 and are responsible for additional and more in-depth work including an oral presentation and seminars with the instructor. This additional work is geared towards preparing the student for the successful completion of their Senior Thesis. Students who have earned credit for HIS 347 Treason Accusations in a previous year may not enroll and earn credit for HIS 447 Treason Accusation Capstone.
HON 499	Honors Senior Capstone Experience Preparation Workshop	FALL 2024
The advanced non-credit bearing Senior Capstone Preparation Workshop is open only to Honors students and is required in the student's senior year.
HIS 105	Global History II: Globalization, the Emergence of the Modern State, and Coping with Change	SPRING 2025
This course is an introduction to themes and trends in the political, economic, cultural, and social history of modern societies in global perspective. It covers the development of societies in Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas from the "Columbian Exchange" to the twenty-first century with emphasis on the development of institutions within their changing cultural, political, and environmental context, as well as the impact of encounters between human societies. Students are introduced to the historiography of globalization and of the modern state. Further attention is devoted to the analysis of different categories of primary sources. (It is recommended that HIS 104 be taken prior to HIS 105).
HIS 204	Love and Betrayal in the History of Italy from the Renaissance to the Present	SPRING 2025
Italy in many of its aspects can be considered to be a laboratory of Western modernity. The peninsula had a leading role in Western affairs during Antiquity and the Middle Ages, but this role was lost by the end of the fifteenth century. During the modern age, however, Italy continued to provide a central point of reference in the European mind. This course focuses attention on the cultural, social and political developments in Italian history in their European context since the Renaissance. Themes include the struggles over national identity in the absence of a unified nation state, the differing regions and competing centers, the interplay of culture and politics, the discussions of the nature of law and of legitimacy, and the relation between religion and politics. Music and opera in their social and cultural roles, as well as the development of legal concepts for the strengthening of statehood provide the main avenues to show how emotions such as love and accusations of betrayal have played a driving role in shaping the Italy of today.
HIS 245W	Worlds of Judaism	SPRING 2025
This course is an introduction to the multifaceted civilization of Judaism as both a religion and as a historical phenomenon. After a survey of the background and preconditions of the emergence of the Hebrew bible and of monotheistic culture within the context of the ancient Middle East in antiquity, the course focuses on the cultural mechanisms such as religious law and memory that kept the various Jewish worlds somewhat linked, despite the Diaspora from the time of the Babylonian Captivity onwards, and even more so following the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE. Attention is given to religious, cultural, and social developments that made Judaism survive from antiquity through the middle ages to the present, and also to the different reactions to its respective environments, in areas as diverse as Babylonia in the age of the Talmud, the "Golden Age" of Islamic Spain, or Germany and the Americas in the Modern era. The final part of the course covers the rise of a Jewish center in Palestine in the twentieth century, the ensuing tensions between this center and the persisting diasporas particularly after the Holocaust, as well as the often violent relations between the state of Israel and the non-Jewish inhabitants of the area, and the wider Muslim world. (This writing-intensive course counts towards the Academic Writing requirements.)

Research interests:

Identities and identity politics in the 19th and 20th century, the history and politics of popular culture, History of the Eurovision Song Contest, history and methodology of historiography.

Publications:

Books:

Heinrich Graetz: Jewish Identify and Historiography, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008.

Reviewed in:

Dieter Langewiesche, in: sehepunkte 9 (2009), Nr. 4 (15.04.2009), http://www.sehepunkte.de/2009/04/12484.html

Kristiane Gerhardt, in: H-Soz-u-Kult, 22.07.2009, http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensionen/2009-3-063

Ulrich Sieg, in: Historische Zeitschrift 290 (2010), Nr. 1.

Articles in Journals:

“Historiography and Identity. On the Importance and Potential of a Contested Approach“, in Historische Zeitschrift 280 (2005), Nr. 2, 381-392.

Chapters in Books:

"Von Reformen ganz enormen traeumen wir am Bosporus." Das Osmanische Reich als Vorbild wider Willen in Leo Fall’s Erfolgsoperette Die Rose von Stambul (1916),“ in: Yavuz Köse (ed.): ªehrâyin. Die Welt der Osmanen, die Osmanen in der Welt. Wahrnehmungen, Begegnungen und Abgrenzungen. Festschrift Hans Georg Majer, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2012, S. 441-461. http://www.operetta-research-center.org/main.php?task=5&cat=4&sub_cat=13&id=00357

"Jewish Studies" in: Christian Klein (ed.), Handbuch Biographie. Methoden, Traditionen, Theorien (Encyclopedia of Biography. Methods, Traditions, Theories). Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 2010, pp. 414-418.

"Jews in Munich from Mid-19th Century to 1887/92", in: Jüdisches München. Vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, ed. by Michael Brenner and Richard Breuer, München: C.H. Beck 2006, 89-109.

"Religion and the Popularization of 'Eternal Truths'. The Example of Christian and Islamic Haeresiographies“, in: Wissenspopularisierung. Konzepte der Wissensverbreitung im Wandel, ed. by Carsten Kretschmann, Berlin 2003, 47-77.

“The Jewish World in the 12th Century and the Travelogue (“Sefär Massa‘ot”) of Benjamin of Tudela“, in: Kultur – ein Netz von Bedeutungen, ed. by Florian Steger, Würzburg 2002, 55-76.

Works in Progress:“‘Pfeif’ ich auf die Weltmisere’. The Politics of Operetta in the First Half of the 20th Century between Escapism and Propaganda”.“What is a Jew? Biography Writing, Categorization, and Identity Politics in Modern Jewish History and Beyond”.“Grand Tourism? Traditions, Opportunities, and Challenges of Educational Travel” (joint project).

Awards and Honors:

Association of Friends of the Ludwigs Maximilians Univeristät München (LMU), Award for the Best Ph.D. thesis in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the LMU in 2005.

Harvard University, Center for Jewish Studies, Harry Starr Postdoctoral Fellowship in Judaica, 2005/6.

Institute for European History Mainz, Fellow, 2004.

Stiftung Dialogik Zurich/Toronto, Mary and Hermann Lewin Goldschmidt-Bollag Fellowship, 2003.

Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, Doctoral Fellowship, 2000/3.