History 760: Historical Methodologies

Professor Tracy Teslow

Fall 2010

4:00 – 6:20 p.m. Thursday, 323 McMicken

Office hours: Monday 2:00-3:00 p.m. and Thursday 2:00-3:30 p.m., and by appointment

310D McMicken Hall tel: 556-2557 email:

Course Description

This course introduces graduate students to the theory and practice of history. Readings address both major philosophical issues that confront those seeking to understand and construct an account of the past, as well as significant historiographic trends in the practice of history by European and American historians.

Readings

Required:

  • Edward H. Carr, What is History?, [1961] 1967

(ISBN-10: 039470391X; ISBN-13: 9780394703916)

  • R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History: With Lectures 1926-1928, edited and with an introduction by Jan van der Dussen, [1946] 1994

(ISBN-10: 0192853066; ISBN-13: 9780192853066)

  • Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession, Cambridge University Press, 1988

(ISBN-10:0521357454; ISBN-13: 9780521357456)

  • James Cook, Lawrence Glickman, and Michael O’Malley, eds., The Cultural Turn in U. S. History: Past, Present, and Future, University of Chicago Press, 2009

(ISBN-10: 0226115070; ISBN-13: 9780226115078)

  • Leora Auslander, Cultural Revolutions: Everyday Life and Politics in Britain, North America, and France, University of California Press, 2009

(ISBN-13: 9780520259218)

  • Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre, Harvard University Press, 1984

(ISBN-10: 0674766911; ISBN-13: 9780674766914)

  • Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences, Knopf Doubleday, [1966] 1994

(ISBN-10: 0679753354; ISBN-13: 9780679753353)

  • Geoff Eley, A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society, University of Michigan Press, 2005

(ISBN-10: 0472069047; ISBN-13: 9780472069040)

Recommended:

  • Georg Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge, Wesleyan University Press [1997] 2005

(ISBN-10: 0819567663; ISBN-13: 9780819567666)

  • Allan Megill, Historical Knowledge, Historical Error: A Contemporary Guide to Practice, University of Chicago Press, 2007

(ISBN-10: 0226518302; ISBN-13: 9780226518305)

  • Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History, University of California Press, 1989 [e-book]

(ISBN-10: 0520064291 ISBN-13: 9780520064294)

  • Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, Johns Hopkins University Press, [1978] 1986

(ISBN-10: 0801827418; ISBN-13: 9780801827419)

All required books are available at the University and DuBois bookstores. You may want to investigate purchasing your books online via sites such as Alibris, Abebooks, and Half Price Books, which may have good used copies often at very low prices. Books available as E-books through the online catalog are noted in the syllabus. Required readings not among those listed above will be posted as pdf documents on Blackboard under Course Documents.

Course Structure, Assignments, Grading

This class is a seminar devoted to in-depth discussion of the weekly reading. You will be expected to read at least one book and/or a number of articles each week, and to be prepared to discuss them. To facilitate discussions, each week two students will write 2-3 page “pro” and “con” position papers on the week’s readings, presenting their point of view on the central argument(s) or ideas in the assigned material. These position papers will be due the Wednesday before class, distributed as email attachments to the whole class (including your professor!).

In addition to your position paper, you will write three 6-8 page analytical essays in response to our reading and discussion, based on prompts I will provide.

Grading

Participation30%

Essays (3 x 20% each)60%

Position paper10%

100%

Please note:

  • Plagiarism is not allowed and may result in a failing grade for the course. Plagiarism entails presenting others’ work as your own—whether that of your roommate, work obtained on the internet, or material from a book or article. You need not copy an entire paper or article to commit plagiarism—any identifiable portion of text that you include in your essay without proper attribution constitutes plagiarism and is grounds for action. If you are unclear about what constitutes plagiarism, please consult guidelines in the Student Code of Conduct or talk to me.
  • Late papers. Papers turned in after the due date without prior approval will be penalized. Exceptions will be made only in the case of hardship or illness. Every effort should be made to notify me in advance.

Course Schedule

Sept. 23Week 1: Introduction: What is History?

  • Edward H. Carr, What is History?, [1961] 1967
  • Eric Foner, “Rethinking American History in a Post-9-11 World,” [originally published in Liberal Education, 2003]

Further background/orientation:

  • Georg Iggers, “Introduction” (quick overview of the historical discipline), in Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge, [1997] 2005, p. 1-22

Sept. 30Week 2: Historicism, Romanticism and the Idea of History

  • R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History: With Lectures 1926-1928, edited and with an introduction by Jan van der Dussen, Oxford University Press, [1946] 1994
  • Wilhelm Dilthey, The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences (1883-1911), translated by Rudolf A. Makkreel and John Scanlon, Princeton University Press, 2002 [e-book]
  • Introduction p. 1-20; Part II: The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, p. 101-112

Further background/orientation:

  • Iggers, essays on historicism, p. 23-50

Oct. 7Week 3: Narrative

Philosopher Hayden White on Narrative:

  • Hayden White, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact,” [originally in Tropics of Discourse, Johns Hopkins, 1978] in Geoffrey Roberts, ed.,The History and Narrative Reader, London; New York, Routledge, 2001, p. 221-236
  • Hayden White, “Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth in Historical Representation,” in Figural Realism, Johns Hopkins, [1999] 2000, p. 27-42 [e-book]

Reactions to White:

  • Lawrence Stone, “The Revival of Narrative: Reflections on a New Old History,” Past & Present, 85 (Nov. 1979): 3-24
  • Eric Hobsbawm, “The Revival of Narrative: Some Comments,” Past & Present, 86 (Feb. 1980): 3-8 (response to Stone) [also in Iggers]
  • Amos Funkenstein, “History, Counterhistory, and Narrative,” in Saul Friedlander, ed.,Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the "Final Solution,”Harvard University Press, 1992, p. 66-81
  • Martin Jay, “Of Plots, Witnesses, and Judgments,” in Saul Friedlander, ed.,Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the "Final Solution,”Harvard University Press, 1992, p. 97-107
  • David Carr, "Narrative and the Real World: An Argument for Continuity," History and Theory 25:2 (1986): 117-31 [also in Roberts anthology]

Further background/orientation:

  • Iggers, “Lawrence Stone and the Revival of Narrative,” p. 97-100
  • Lloyd S. Kramer, “Literature, criticism, and historical imagination: the literary challenge of Hayden White and Dominick LaCapra” in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History, University of California Press, 1989, p. 97-130 [e-book]
  • A. Dirk Moses, “Hayden White, Traumatic Nationalism, and the Public Role of History,” History and Theory, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Oct., 2005): 311-332

Oct. 14Week 4: Objectivity & Subjectivity

Objectivity, Subjectivity and Historians:

  • Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession, Cambridge University Press, 1988
  • Especially sections: “Objectivity Enthroned” and “Objectivity in Crisis,” p. 21-110 and p. 415-629 – Skim!
  • Michel Rolph-Trouillot, “The Power in the Story,” Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Beacon Press,1995, p. 1-30
  • Bonnie Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice, Harvard University Press, 2000 [e-book]
  • “What is a Historian?” p. 70-102; “Men and Facts,” p. 130-156
  • Hilda Smith, “A Prize-Winning Book Revisited - Women Historians and Women's History: A Conflation of Absence - That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession by Peter Novick,” Journal of Women’s History,4:1 (1992:Spring): 133-141

Case Study:

  • “A Case Study in Historical Epistemology: What Did the Neighbors Know about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings?” in Allan Megill, Historical Knowledge, Historical Error: A Contemporary Guide to Practice, University of Chicago Press, 2007 p.125-150

Further background/orientation:

  • For an interesting debate on the insights and flaws of Novick’s book, see the forum on That Noble Dream in the American Historical Review, 1991, v.96, n.3, 675-708
  • Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, Zone Books, 2007

Paper #1 due on Blackboard via Safe Assign

Oct. 21Week 5: The Annales School and la longue durée

  • Fernand Braudel, “Preface,”The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II,translated from French by Siân Reynolds, Harper & Row, 1972
  • Skim Braudel’s 2-volume monograph for style of argument + scope (on reserve at Langsam)
  • F. Braudel, “History and the Social Sciences: The Long Duree,” On History, University of Chicago Press, 1980
  • Georg Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge, Wesleyan University Press, 2005
  • “France: The Annales,” p. 51-64
  • Francois Furet, “From Narrative History to Problem-Oriented History,” [originally in In the Workshop of History, University of Chicago Press, 1984] in Geoffrey Roberts, ed.,The History and Narrative Reader,London; New York: Routledge, 2001, p. 269-280
  • D. W. Dray, "Narrative versus Analysis in History," Philosophy of the Social Sciences 15:2(June 1985): 125-45

Further background/orientation:

  • Allan Megill, “Narrative and Braudel’s Mediterranean” and “Coherence and Incoherence in Historical Studies: From the Annales School to the New Cultural History” in Historical Knowledge, Historical Error: A Contemporary Guide to Practice, University of Chicago Press, 2007

Oct. 28Week 6: Microhistory

  • Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre, Harvard University Press, 1984
  • Robert Finlay, “The Refashioning of Martin Guerre,” American Historical Review, 93:3 (1988): 553-571
  • Natalie Zemon Davis, “On the Lame,” American Historical Review, 93:3 (1988) p. 572-603
  • Natalie Zemon Davis, “Stories and the Hunger to Know (In Lieu of Introduction),” Litteraria Pragensia, 1:1 (1991), p. 12-13
  • Jill Lepore, “Historians Who Love Too Much: Reflections on Microhistory and Biography,” Journal of American History, 2001, v.88, n.1, p. 133
  • Iggers, “From Macro- to Microhistory: The History of Everyday Life,” p. 101-117

Nov. 4Week 7: The Cultural Turn

  • Leora Auslander, Cultural Revolutions: Everyday Life and Politics in Britain, North America, and France University of California Press, 2009
  • James Cook, Lawrence Glickman, Michael O’Malley, eds., The Cultural Turn in U. S. History: Past, Present, and Future, University of Chicago Press, 2009
  • “Twelve Propositions for a History of U.S. Cultural History,” p. 3-58
  • Philip J. Deloria, “From Nation to Neighborhood: Land, Policy, Culture, Colonialism, and Empire in U.S.-Indian Relations,” p. 343-382
  • Suzanne Desan, “Crowds, Community, and Ritual in the Work of E. P. Thompson and Natalie Davis,” in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989, p.47-71 [e-book]
  • E(dward) P(almer) Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Vintage Books, 1963,
  • “Preface,” p. 9-14 and additional excerpt TBA

Further background/orientation:

  • Additional examples of U.S. cultural history in Cook et. al., The Cultural Turn in U. S. History: Past, Present, and Future
  • Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France,” Past & Present, 59 (May 1973): 51-91
  • E.P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past & Present, vol. 50 (February 1971): 76-136

Paper #2 due on Blackboard via Safe Assign

Nov. 11Week 8: Poststructuralism

  • Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences, Knopf Doubleday, [1966] 1994
  • Patricia O’Brien, “Michel Foucault’s History of Culture,” in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989, p. 25-47 [e-book]
  • Larry Shiner, “Reading Foucault: Anti-Method and the Genealogy of Power-Knowledge,” History and Theory, vol. 21, issue 3 (Oct. 1982), p. 382-398

Nov. 18Week 9: Postcolonialism

  • Ania Loomba, “Defining the Terms: Colonialism, Imperialism, Neo-colonialism, Postcolonialism,” Colonialism-postcolonialism, Routledge, 1998, p. 1-19
  • Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Ania Loomba,Colonialism-postcolonialism, Routledge, 1998, p. 231-244
  • John Beverley, “What Happens When the Subaltern Speaks? Rigoberta Menchú, Multiculturalism, and the Presumption of Equal Worth,” in Testimonio: On the Politics of Truth, University of Minnesota Press, 2004, p. 79-94
  • Gyan Prakash, “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 99, No. 5 (Dec., 1994), p. 1475-1490
  • Frederick Cooper, “Colonial Questions” and “The Rise and Fall of Colonial Studies” in Colonialism in Question: theory, knowledge, history, University of California Press, 2005, p. 3-32 and 33-58
  • Prasenjit Duara, “To Think Like an Empire,” (review of Cooper), History and Theory, 46 (May 2007), p. 292-298
  • Ann Stoler, “Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers: European Identities and the Cultural Politics of Exclusion in Colonial Southeast Asia,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 34, no. 2, (1992), p. 514-51

Nov. 25Week 10: Thanksgiving – NO CLASS

Dec. 2Week 11: Where are we now?

  • Geoff Eley, A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society, University of Michigan Press, 2005

Paper #3 due on Blackboard via Safe Assign

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