HISTORY 300
“APPROACHES TO HISTORY”
(Section 37051R)
Meets Tu Th 9:30-10:50 am
VKC 104
P. ETHINGTON
Office: 167 SOS Bldg
Office Hours TBA
and by appointment.
email advisement encouraged
Overview: “Historians, Knowledge, Public Memory, and Nation”
What do we know about the past, and how do we know it? What should history be about? What are the differences between “knowledge,” “understanding,” and “meaning” of the past? How do citizens and historians and others decide how to interpret the past of their own nation? When (and where, how and why) does the transition from “current events” to “historical events” take place? When issues of great moral gravity are involved, can historical representation achieve any sort of neutral, objective, or factual status? How do cultural differences between and within nations shape the answers to all of the above? What should be the goal of historical interpretation when intrinsically ethical questions of justice, loyalty, national identity, national defense, war crimes, and human rights are concerned?
Based on the readings in this course and on the twice-weekly seminar discussions, students are expected to develop their own answers to the questions posed above, and to apply them to the deliberate mass killing of civilians by the United States and the Allied forces during World War II.
Assignments and Grading:
1) Weekly Reading Reactions. Every week, each student shall submit one (1) one-page summary and reaction to the assigned reading for either Tuesday or Thursday of that week (students will be divided randomly into Tuesday or Thursday people—and this designation can rotate). (30% of course grade).
These are due on the day that readings are due, and shall cover all of the readings for that day (but not the whole week). You need to both summarize the reading and identify its main theme or argument (depending on the type of reading), and also “react” to it. That reaction can come in several forms, but the primary goal is to judge the effectiveness of the written work in terms of its logical coherence and its evidence. The over-arching purpose of this assignment is to prepare you for the discussions each week, which depend not only on having read the assignments, but also to have thought about them.
2) Initiating and Participation in Discussions and Participation (30%)
Participation: This is a seminar course, so everyone is expected to participate in discussions. I will evaluate this portion of your grade based on the quality of your contributions. Coming unprepared to class is not an option!
Initiating: On a rotating basis, every student shall initiate the discussions. Preparation for this role is very important. You need to prepare a brief summary of the reading and also a series of provocative questions about the readings, to initiate a discussion among your classmates.
BRING THIS TO CLASS ON THE DAY THAT YOU INITIATE, IN A ONE-PAGE FORMAT, TO DISTRIBUTE TO THE OTHER STUDENTS.
This handout should include a few sentences on what the reading was about; what you see as the major theme(s) and argument(s) (thesis/theses) raised by the reading; and a list of discussion questions. The number is not fixed, but three- to five good ones is a good target.
It is your responsibility to get this discussion rolling, so you need to give substantial thought to the task prior to coming to class. Evaluation will be based on how well you engage your fellow students and stimulate them to discuss the issues raised by the readings. This will happen if you give the task sufficient creative thought beforehand.
3) Final Paper (40%):
The final assignment for this course is for you to create a hypothetical public exhibit to be presented in Washington D.C., (but not necessarily in the Smithsonian museum system) about the firebombing and atomic bombing of Japanese cities, culminating in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You do not need to become an expert on all phases of those raids. Rather, you need to specify how your exhibit will be conceptualized, and to justify your approach to the exhibit, with the goal of bringing all significant truths to the public, the historical knowledge that will help them to make sense of those true facts, and an interpretive scheme. Your final project can be presented in any media, electronic or material, but it must be accompanied by a 15-20 page paper that will be evaluated as a formal essay. Written details about the expectations for this final project will be distributed within the first few weeks of class. No additional reading apart from that listed in this syllabus is required for the research and writing of these papers, except some use of the online databases of major newspapers from that era and later.
In-class Screening:
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003), Dir. Errrol Morris.
…plus misc. US Dept. of War and other contemporary film and newsreel.
Online Documents:
Harry S. Truman Museum and Library, “The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb”
Assigned Readings:
John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (Oxford, 2004).
Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Use and Abuse of History for Everyday Life” [originally published in 1878]
Philip J. Ethington, “Placing the Past: ‘Groundwork’ for a Spatial Theory of History,” forum with responses by Thomas Bender, David Carr, Edward Casey, Edward Dimendberg, and Alun Munslow, Rethinking History 11:4 (December 2007): 463-530. [available through USC library subscriptions to this journal, and as a PDF on Blackboard]
Kenzaburo Oe, Hiroshima Notes. Translated by David L Swain and Toshi Yonezawa. (Originally published 1965; English edition Grove Press, 1981)
Thomas, Julia A., Photography, National Identity, and the ‘Cataract of Times’: Wartime Images and the Case of Japan. American Historical Review 103:5 (December 1998): 1475-1501. Available on JSTOR (USC Libraries).
John W. Dower, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq (Norton, 2010).
A.C. Grayling, Among The Dead Cities (Walker & Company, 2007).
James S. Olson and Randy Roberts, eds, My Lai: A Brief History With Documents. (Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 1998).
“Beyond My Lai : New Revelations of Vietnam Atrocities”
The Nation, August 7, 2006
Linenthal, Edward T. and Tom Engelhardt Eds., History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past
NY: Holt Paperbacks, 1996)
Weekly Schedule and Reading Assignments
Week / Date / Book/ReadingPart I: Theories and Methods of Historians
1 / 10 Jan / Intro. Screen Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, (Dir Errol Morris, 2003), parts.
12 Jan / Nietzsche, “The Use and Abuse of History for Everyday Life” [1878]
2 / 17 Jan / Gaddis, Landscape of History, first half.
19 Jan / Gaddis, Landscape of History, second half
3 / 24 Jan / Ethington, et al, “Placing the Past” (PDF on Blackboard).
4 / 26 Jan / John W. Dower, “Three Narratives of Our Humanity,” in Lilenthal and Englehardt, History Wars, pp. 63-96.
4 / 31 Jan / Oe, Hiroshima Notes, pp. 7-96 (Through Chapter 3)
2 Feb / Oe Hiroshima Notes, pp. 97-end
5 / 7 Feb / Dower, Cultures of War, Preface – Chap. 4
9 Feb / Dower, Cultures of War, Chaps 5 - 8
6 / 14 Feb / Dower, Cultures of War, Chaps 9 - 12
16 Feb / Dower, Cultures of War, Chaps 13 - Epilogue
7 / 21 Feb / Screening: To the Shores of Iwo Jima (U.S. Marine Corps, 1945); Letters from Iwo Jima (Dir. Clint Eastwood, 2006)
23 Feb
8 / 28 Feb / Grayling, Among the Dead Cities Chaps 1 -3.
1 Mar / Grayling, Among the Dead Cities Chaps 4-6.
9 / 6 Mar / Grayling, Among the Dead Cities Chaps 7-8.
8 Mar / Thomas, Julia A., Photography, National Identity, and the ‘Cataract of Times’: Wartime Images and the Case of Japan (1998).
10 / 13 Mar / Sherwin, A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and its Legacies, Parts I and II
15 Mar / Sherwin, A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and its Legacies, Part III
11 / 20 Mar / From Linenthal and Englehardt, History Wars
- Englehardt and Lilenthal, “Introduction: History Under Siege.”
- Linenthal, Chapter 1: “Anatomy of a Controversy.”
- Sherry, “Patriotic Orthodoxy and American Decline.”
- Boyer, “Whose History Is It Anyway?: Memory, Politics, and Historical Scholarship.”
22 Mar / From Linenthal and Englehardt, History Wars
- Wallace, “Culure War, History Front.”
- Young, “Dangerous History: Vietnam and the ‘Good War’.”
- Englehardt, “The Victors and the Vanquished.”
12 / 27 Mar / Theories and Methods of History, Readings TBA
29 Mar / Ethington in Oxford
13 / 3 Apr
5 Apr
14 / 10 Apr / Theories and Methods of History, Readings TBA
12 Apr / Theories and Methods of History, Readings TBA
15 / 17 Apr / Theories and Methods of History, Readings TBA
19 Apr / Final Project Presentations and Critiques
16 / 24 Apr / Final Project Presentations and Critiques
26 Apr / Final Project Presentations and Critiques
Tues 13 Dec. / Due Date for Final Projects, 5 pm. (official day for the “final exam”)
1