This chapter offers a reflection on the historical study of modern Europe’s entanglements with the wider world. It explores the ways in which European history can be integrated into global history, considering Europe as not only an engine but also a product of global transformations. Providing a broad historiographical overview, it discusses the impact of the “global turn” on different fields of modern European history, including political, economic, social, intellectual, and environmental history. It argues that global history represents not only a challenge but also a huge opportunity for Europeanists to open up modern European history. This will ultimately help us reshape our understanding of the boundaries of Europe – and the field of European history itself. In other words, it will allow us to deprovincialize Europe. More generally, the chapter also engages with broader questions about continents (and other spatial units) as ontological categories in historical studies.

This chapter addresses the connections between queer theory and the history of sexuality. The chapter introduces the origins and development of queer theory as an approach that perceives sexuality and gender as constructed and rejects the notion of fixed and stable identities. The chapter addresses queer theory’s adaptation to different geographical locations and questions related to the translation of the term “queer” from one language to another. It continues with discussing the connections and tensions between queer theory and the history of sexuality, and addresses queer perspectives on the archive and the practice of oral history as topics on which the queer theoretical developments have particular relevance for historians. The chapter focuses on two aspects in queer theory, namely the continuities and ruptures in history as well as queer approaches to temporality. The chapter closes with a short reflection on the future possibilities of utilizing queer theory for studies on the history of sexuality. The chapter argues that while queer theory and contemporary research on the history of sexuality already converge in essential points, such as understanding sexuality as socially constructed and the distrust of ahistorical identities, the relationship between these two still holds unexplored opportunities for research.