History 783: History and Theory

Monday 5:30- 8 pm

Contact Information

Dr. Kathryn Edwards

Office Hours: M3:30-5, W 12-1, and by appt.
230 Gambrell Hall
Phone: 7-7326

Email: KathrynEdwards@sc.edu

Course Goals:

This course shares the goals of many graduate reading seminars, although certain ones may be more obvious because of the nature of the topic:

• Introduce students to interpretations and methodologies that have influenced historical studies in the last several decades. As such, we will be reading works by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and scholars of literature and many other disciplines.

• Read, READ, READ!!! Graduate study involves the accumulation of information about specific topics so that you can enhance your interpretive skills and appreciation of historical eras. In order to accomplish that goal, you need to read for hours each week. The class readings are truly a minimum that you will need to be conversant in this topic; the bibliographies in the assigned readings can point you towards other areas of inquiry.

• Teach students how to evaluate current research in a particular discipline in light of disciplinary concerns and historical evidence. The most common and abbreviated way such evaluations are presented is through an historiographical essay: a survey and interpretation of literature in a specific field. The production of such an essay will be the primary assignment in this class.

Reading Materials:

The following materials are available for pickup at Copy Pick-up at 1830 Rosewood Dr.

Reader, History 783, parts 1 and 2 . I have divided the reader into 2 Parts for ease of carrying. Be sure to get both parts.

The following books are required readings for the course.

• Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York, 1983). Verson books, revised edition, 1991.
• Michel Foucault. History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York, 1990 [1976]).
• Carl G. Jung, ed. Man and His Symbols. 1997.
• Thomas W. Laqueur. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
• Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (New York: Routledge, 1995).
• William M. Reddy. The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of the Emotions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• Edward Said, Orientalism. New York: Random House, 1978.
• Bonnie G. Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
• Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990)
  OR Alan Munslow, Deconstructing History. New York: Routledge, 1998.

Whenever possible, I have placed the library copy on one-week reserve, which I hope will let you share books without being stuck in the library for all of your reading. Of course, feel free to use other sources for these materials!

For Reference:

In the past students have wanted some sort of textbook or survey for the topics we're covering and have found the two following books particularly useful. These books are NOT required reading for the course.

• Alan Munslow. The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies. New York: Routledge, 2000.
• Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory. 2d ed. New York: Blackwell, 1997.
• Georg C. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge. Wesleyan University Press, 1997.

Grading: Your grade will be based on:

• On-going participation in class discussion. It is expected that each student will complete each week's readings and be actively engaged in class discussion. Students should come to class with all of the week's reading material, with points and pages marked to discuss, and with questions to pose.
• Leading one discussion. There are two parts to this assignment. First, you will need to provide me with a list of two-three questions for each text read that week plus two-three synthetic questions that link all or most of the reading. You must email those questions to me by Sunday at noon so that I can post them before our class meeting and everyone will have time to consider them. Second, you should be prepared to direct class discussion for that topic, although a formal presentation is unnecessary.. You should have notes giving key themes, the pages where they can be found, and some questions to stimulate discussion (These can be the same ones you post online or more focused ones designed to stimulate a lagging discussion). Use the syllabus to decide which discussion you'd prefer to lead; a sign-up sheet will go around during the first seminar meeting.
• Three essays of c. 5 pages summarizing weekly topics; a handout describing how to do these papers will be distributed. Each essay should discuss the major themes and problems raised by the week's reading. No conclusion on the approach's validity is necessary, but you must identify the major issues clearly, provide a complete, concise description of them, and, if relevant, respond to queries raised in the works. You may choose which topics you'd like to examine, although it would be wise to do one of your essays on the day you lead class discussion.
• An outline and bibliography for your final project.
• A presentation of your final project to the class.
• A critical analysis of a particular theorist or school of history whose works have influenced modern historiography or how a theorist or school have influenced the study of a particular historical genre. This paper should be at least 12-15 pp. long and include a bare MINIMUM of 5 books plus key articles. (The topic chosen determines the number of sources.) You will be graded on the presentation of material and the material selected. In other words, your sources should be the most current and influential works in the field you have chosen; just using what is immediately available in Cooper Library will almost certainly be unacceptable. A separate handout will describe how to do this paper in greater detail.

This is not a research paper, but a historiographical essay, and it will be worth c. 50-60% of your final grade.

**Please note that attendance at all classes is expected.**

Syllabus

August 22 Course orientation

August 29 The Annales School(s)

Reader:

Lucien Febvre, "A New Kind of History," in A New Kind of History: From the Writings of Lucien Febvre, Ed. Peter Burke (New York: Routledge, 1973), 27-43.

Fernand Braudel. "History and the Social Sciences" and "On a Concept of Social History" in On History. Trans. Sarah Matthews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 25-54 & 120-31.

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, "Motionless History," Social Science History 1 (1977): 115-136. (also known, albeit infrequently, as "History that Stands Still")

The Editors of Annales. "History and Social Science: A Critical Turning Point." Annales ESC 43 (1988): 291-93.

The Editors of Annales. "Let's Try the Experiment." Annales ESC 44 (1989): 1317-23

One book from the following list:

Bloch, Marc. Feudal Society.

Bloch, Marc. The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France.

Braudel, Fernand. The Identity of France. (Only need to read one volume)

Braudel, Fernand. The Mediterranean and The Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. (Only need to read one volume)

Braudel, Fernand. Civilization and Capitalism. 3 vols. (Only need to read one volume)

Duby, Georges. The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined.

Duby, Georges. Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West.

Febvre, Lucien. The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rablais.

Febvre, Lucien. A Geographical Introduction to History.

Febvre, Lucien & Henri-Jean Martin. The Coming of the Book.

Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. The French Peasantry, 1450-1660.

Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error.

Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate since the year 1000.

LeGoff, Jacques. Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages.

**If you are interested in reading other works by these authors, please email me for approval before you begin reading.

September 12 Anthropology and History: the Example of Clifford Geertz

Reader:

Clifford Geertz, "Thick Description: Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture" and " Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight," in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 3-30 & 412-54.

Clifford Geertz, "Being There: Anthropology and the Scene of Writing," in Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 1-24.

Special edition of Representations (The Fate of "Culture": Geertz and Beyond) 59 (Summer 1997). See, in order, Sherry B. Ortner (introduction); Stephen Greenblatt; Renato I. Rosaldo, Jr.; William H. Sewell, Jr.; George E. Marcus; Lila Abu-Lughod; Sherry B. Ortner. (These documents are available online.)

September 19 Marx and Marxisms

Reader:

Georg Luk‡cs, "Class Consciousness" (1920); "The Phenomenon of Reification" and "The Standpoint of the Proletariat" (1923). (These documents are available online.)

Antonio Gramsci, "Hegemony, Relations of Force, Historical Bloc," in The Antonio Gramsci Reader, ed. David Forgaes (New York: NYU Press, 2000), 189-209.

Karl Marx, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon." (1869). (This document is available online.) YOU MAY READ EITHER MARX OR ENGELS.

Friedrich Engels, "The Peasant War in Germany" (1850) (This document is available online.) YOU MAY READ EITHER MARX OR ENGELS.

E.P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century," Past and Present 50 (Feb. 1971): 76-136.

September 26 The Frankfurt School

Reader:

Richard Wolin, "Part I: The Legacy of the Frankfurt School," in The Terms of Cultural Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 23-79.

Eike Gebhardt, "Introduction to Part III: A Critique of Methodology," in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, Eds. Andrew Arato & Eike Gebhardt (New York: Continuum, 1982), 371-406.

Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception," from The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944). (This document is available online.)

Herbert Marcuse, "Aggressiveness in Advanced Industrial Society" (1968). (This document is available online.)

Bibliography for historiographical essay due

October 3 Deconstruction and the Coherency of Writing

Reader:

Jacques Derrida, chapter 2, in Of Grammatology (1967). (This document is available online.)

Jacques Derrida, "What is Ideology?," in Specters of Marx, the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International (1994). (This document is available online.)

Richard Wolin, "The House that Jacques Built: Deconstruction and Strong Evaluation," in The Terms of Cultural Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 194-218.

Perez Zagorin, "History, the Referent, and Narrative: Reflections on Postmodernism Now." History and Theory 38 (1999): 1-24. (This discussion from History and Theory is available online.)

Thijs Pollmann, "Coherence and Ambiguity in History," History and Theory 39 (May 2000): 167-180.

Keith Jenkins, "A Postmodern Reply to Perez Zagorin," History and Theory 39 (May 2000): 181-200.

Perez Zagorin, "Rejoinder to a Postmoderist." History and Theory 39 (May 2000): 201ff.

October 10 The Linguistic Turn and History as Literature

Choose from one of the following books:

Hayden White. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.

Alan Munslow. Deconstructing History. New York: Routledge, 1998.

Reader:

Nancy Partner, "Hayden White: The Form of the Content," History and Theory 37 (May 1998), 162-72. (These two articles from History and Theory are available online.)

F.R. Ankersmit, "Hayden White's Appeal to the Historians," History and Theory 37 (May 1998), 182-93.

Michel de Certeau, "The Historiographical Operation," in The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley (New York: 1988 [1974]), 56-113.

****October 14 Outline for historiographical essay due. Email it to Dr. Edwards by noon.*******

October 17 Psychoanalysis and History of Emotions

Carl G. Jung, ed. Man and His Symbols. reissue ed. Laureleaf Publishers, 1997.

William M. Reddy. Part 1 of The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of the Emotions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

October 24 Gender

**Read the documents in the Reader first.

Bonnie G. Smith. The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Reader:

Joan W. Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis?" in Gender and the Politics of History. New York, 1988.

Joan Hoff, "Gender as a Postmodern Category of Paralysis," Women's History Review 3:2 (1994): 149-68. (This document is available online)

October 31 Sexuality and Foucault

Michel Foucault. History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley New York, 1990 [1976].

Thomas W. Laqueur. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud New York: Cambridge University Press, 1900.

November 7 Nationalism and the Imagination

Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York, 1983). Verson books, revised edition, 1991.

Reader:

Eric Hobsbawm, "Introduction: Inventing Traditions," in The Invention of Tradition, Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds. (Cambridge, 2000 [1983]).

Elias José Palti, "The Nation as a Problem: Historians and the 'National Question'," History and Theory 40 (October 2001), 324-46. (This document is available online)

November 14               Imperialism

Edward Said. Orientalism. New York: Random House, 1978.

Reader:

Peter Heehs, "Shades of Orientalism: Paradoxes and Problems in Indian Historiography," History and Theory 42 (May 2003), 169-195. (This document is available online.)

Dipesh Chakrabarty, "Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for Indian Pasts," Representations 37 (1992): 1-26. (This document is available online.)

November 21 Race

Ann McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (New York: Routledge, 1995).

Reader:

Patric Wolfe, "Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race," American Historical Review 106:3 (2001). (This document is available online.)

November 28 Presentations
This class meeting will be held at Dr. Edwards's house: 123 Candleberry Circle, Columbia, SC 29201. Everyone should be prepared for a c. 20-minute presentation and discussion of their research, so the meeting will almost certainly run late. Dinner and drinks will be provided.

Final papers are due on Friday, December 9, by noon.

They should be turned in to me, if I'm in my office, or in the History Department. Be sure to have one of the staff write the day and time on the paper.

Assignments In General:

All assignments are due at the beginning of class and will be considered late if they are handed in at any time after that. If a paper is handed in late--which I find almost inconceivable in a graduate course--you will be penalized one letter grade for every 24 hours the paper is late. If I'm not in my office, you can give late papers to one of the staff members in the History Dept. office (245 Gambrell), but be sure to have them write the day and time you handed in the paper on the front page. Incompletes will only be awarded in case of emergencies, and poor planning does not constitute an emergency. Please schedule your assignments well in advance of when they are due, especially because you will almost certainly need to use inter-library loan services.