Dear HISTB319 Course Participants,
Many of you received this email last week. I am just sending out this announcement again because we've had a few new folks register since my last message. Please do complete the pre-course survey before Wednesday.
My name is Ben Van Zee and I am your professor for HISTB319: “Refugees and Modern Europe.” I am looking forward to meeting you on Wednesday!
I am still setting up our Moodle page. In the meantime, I have posted readings for our first class session next week (2 Sept 2026), along with a few brief assignments, all of which you will find under “Week 1” in Moodle.
Tasks to prepare for our first class:
- Please complete the pre-course survey that I have posted in Moodle.
- Look up one or two terms, historical events, or ideas mentioned in the readings that you were unfamiliar with or had a shaky understanding of, and come to class prepared to explain them to one or two of your classmates. For more information, see the “Instructions and Reading Questions” document I have posted in Moodle under “Week 1”. Please read it before diving into the texts themselves; it provides key context and questions to guide your reading of them.
- Read and take notes on the following assigned texts and develop responses to the questions that I have provided.
Assigned Reading:
[I highly encourage you to print & hand-annotate all PDF readings for this class]
Matthew Carr, “A Gated Continent,” Fortress Europe: Dispatches from a Gated Continent (2016), 11-24.
Astrid R. Zolberg et al., “Who is a Refugee”, Escape from Violence (1989), 3-33.
Peter Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee (2013), 1-13.
Jérôme Elie, “Histories of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies,” The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (2014), 23-32.
All of these texts are now available on our Moodle page. If you have any issues accessing them, please don’t hesitate to write to me, and I will email them to you directly. I am sending this message both over the Moodle announcement system and via email to ensure that everyone receives it. You should receive it twice.
Please do not hesitate to write if you have any questions or concerns.
Welcome back to campus! Good luck settling in!
I’m looking forward to meeting you all soon.
Sincerely,
Ben Van Zee