The internment of people in camps—controlled environments outside the jurisdiction of the regular penal system—began before the twentieth century. However, from the end of the nineteenth century and during the first half of the twentieth century, the use of such detention centers was greatly extended. Prisoners of war, persecuted minority groups, enemy aliens, political prisoners, refugees, and work migrants increasingly found themselves in such internment facilities and without knowing the date of their release. Tens of millions of people found themselves in the camps for long periods of time. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben regarded camps as a primary site for understanding the modern human condition and a prominent place for normalizing "states of exception".  In this seminar, we will examine the emergence of different types of camps within Europe and outside it. We will focus especially on POW camps, gulags, detention camps for enemy aliens and concentration camps, but we will not deal with extermination camps.