teaching.qmd

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title: "Teaching"
description-meta: "Courses taught by Emre Amasyalı in sociology and political science."
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## SOC12 Sociology of Empire, Colonialism, and Imperialism

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[University of Cambridge, Department of Sociology](https://www.sociology.cam.ac.uk/people/emre-amasyali)

Course convenor and instructor for an undergraduate paper examining the global historical sociology of empire, colonialism, and imperialism. The course first asks what global historical sociology is, both as a method in and a conceptual area of social science, and then reflects on the realities of empire and colonialism, including histories of violence, insurgency, capital accumulation, and knowledge production. Substantive case studies include the emergence of colonial and post-colonial nationalisms, the entanglements of race, empire, and capitalism, homonationalism, and the logics of anti-colonial revolutions, alongside concepts developed within (and against) colonial imperialisms, such as self-determination, gender, and sexuality. Throughout, the course considers how sociology itself has been entangled in the epistemic prism of empire.

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## Historical Legacies and Development: Roots of Contemporary Issues

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**Winter 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026** · Master's Elective · 4 Credits · [IBEI](https://www.ibei.org)

Course designer and instructor for a master-level elective examining how historical processes shape contemporary global outcomes. Structured around four thematic pillars — colonialism & capitalism, human-environment interactions, fascism, and conflict — the course trains students to interrogate the mechanisms through which the past persists, drawing on path dependence, critical junctures, and comparative methods. The 2026 edition introduces an **AI Historiography Audit** in which students generate and critically audit AI-produced historical essays against primary sources, developing skills to identify factual hallucinations, interpretive bias, and theoretical superficiality in algorithmically generated text.

[Syllabus (2026)](/files/syllabi/historical-legacies-2026.pdf){target="_blank"}

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## Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict

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**Fall 2021** · Master's Elective · 4 Credits · [IBEI](https://www.ibei.org)

Co-instructor (with Prof. Matthias vom Hau) for a master-level elective examining the rise and resilience of nationalism and its implications for conflict, state-building, and development. Organized in three parts — theoretical foundations, the dynamics of violent ethnic conflict, and thematic issues including colonialism, secessionism, and genocide — the course engaged primordial, constructivist, and instrumental approaches to identity alongside economic, institutionalist, and culturalist explanations of ethnic conflict, drawing on foundational texts by Anderson, Gellner, Brubaker, and Fearon & Laitin. Assessment combined student-led case study presentations, a public-facing media piece translating academic research for wider audiences, and a final research paper.

[Syllabus (2021)](/files/syllabi/nationalism-2021.pdf){target="_blank"}

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## Sociological Perspectives

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**Winter 2019, 2021** · Undergraduate (200-level) · McGill University

Course designer and instructor for a prerequisite 200-level introduction to sociology covering social inequality and class, globalization, race and ethnicity, gender, work and rationalization, family, education, deviance, and social movements. Readings paired canonical texts — Piketty, Becker, Lareau — with contemporary empirical research, complemented by weekly discussion sessions to build students' analytical capacities. Assessment combined collaborative annotation (Perusall), a midterm, a critical review essay of McGill faculty research, and a final exam.

[Syllabus (2021)](/files/syllabi/sociological-perspectives-2021.pdf){target="_blank"}

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## Development and Underdevelopment

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**Winter 2018, 2021** · Undergraduate (200-level) · McGill University

Course designer and instructor for a 200-level introduction to the sociology of global development, tracing the concept of development from its historical roots in imperialism and colonialism through competing theoretical traditions — modernization, dependency, world-systems, neoliberalism, and post-development — before applying these frameworks to thematic issues including foreign aid, gender, education, technology, environment, and conflict. Readings ranged from classical foundations in Marx, Weber, and Rostow to contemporary critical theorists such as Harvey, Escobar, and McMichael, with assessment built around a midterm, a final exam, and five short response papers connecting theory to real-world cases.

[Syllabus (2021)](/files/syllabi/development-2021.pdf){target="_blank"}

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