HIST 80000: Literature of Modern Europe I (Draft)
CUNY Graduate Center, Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 5 credits Professor David G. Troyansky Office 5104. Hours: 3:00-4:00 p.m., Wednesday, and by appointment. Direct line: 212 817-8453. Most of the week at Brooklyn College: 718 951-5303. E-mail: [email protected]
This course is designed to introduce first-year students to some of the major debates and recent (and sometimes classic) books in European history from the 1750s to the 1870s. It is also intended to help prepare students for the First (Written) Examination.
Objectives: By the end of the course, students should be able to demonstrate familiarity with many of the central historiographical issues in the period and to assess historical writings in terms of approach, use of sources, and argument. They should be able to draw on multiple works to make larger arguments concerning major problems in European history.
Requirements: Each week, students will come to class prepared to discuss assigned readings. They include common readings and individual works chosen from the supplementary lists. In anticipation of the next day’s class, by early Tuesday evening, students will have submitted by email to the instructor and to the rest of the class a two-to-three-page (double-spaced) paper on their week’s readings. Eleven papers must be submitted; two weeks may be skipped, but even then everyone is expected to be prepared for discussion. The papers should not simply summarize. They should explain and compare the theses of the assigned books; describe the authors’ methods, arguments, and sources; and assess their persuasiveness, significance, and implications.
Two students will be assigned to lead discussion of each week’s common and supplementary readings. Note that the articles and some of the books are available electronically. Books will be available in the CUNY libraries; many will be available inexpensively online.
Grading: The final grade for the course will be based on the papers (50%) and participation in discussion (50%). Because of the centrality of discussion, attendance is expected throughout the term.
Schedule: 8/28 Session 1. Introduction.
9/5 Session 2. Situating Europe Comparatively. Read the following: Caroline Bynum, “The Last Eurocentric Generation,” Perspectives, AHA Newsletter (Feb. 1996). John Gillis, “The Future of European History,” Perspectives (April 1996). Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, (1988) chapters 1 and 2. Deborah Cohen and Maura O’Connor, eds. Comparison and History: Europe in Cross- National Perspective (2004), “Introduction” and chapter 2 (Haupt and Kocka) Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (2001), chapters 1 and 2. Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (2000).
Supplementary readings: Joseph M. Bryant, “The West and the Rest Revisited: Debating Capitalist Origins, European Colonialism, and the Advent of Modernity,” in Canadian Journal of Sociology 31, No. 4 (Autumn 2006): 403-444. Philip C.C. Huang, “Development of Involution in Eighteenth-Century Britain and China? A Review of Kenneth Pomeranz…” in Journal of Asian Studies 61, No. 2 (May 2002): 501-538. Patrick O’Brien, “Ten Years of Debate on the Origins of the Great Divergence,” in Reviews in History
9/12 Session 3. Boundaries of Europe. Read the following: Edward Said, Orientalism (1978), Introduction and chapter 1 (pp. 1-110). Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization and the Mind of the Enlightenment (1994), Introduction, chapter 1, and Conclusion. Robert Brenner, “Economic Backwardness in Eastern Europe in Light of Developments in the West” in: Daniel Chirot, ed. Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe, (1989) pp. 15-52. Nelson Moe, View from Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question (2002), chapters 1 and 2 (pp. 13-81).
Supplementary readings: Marta Petrusewicz, Latifundium: Moral Economy and Material Life in a European Periphery (1996) (also appropriate for the sessions on economy and social class). Emma Rothschild, The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History (2011).
9/19 Session 4. Economy and Demography. Read the following: Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700-1850 (2009). And either Jan De Vries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650-the Present (2008) or Daniel Roche, A History of Everyday Things: The birth of consumption in France, 1600- 1800 (2000).
Supplementary readings: Joyce Appleby, The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism (2010). Jean-Pierre Bardet et Jacques Dupâquier, Histoire des populations de l’Europe II: La révolution démographique 1750-1914 (1998). Gregory Clark, A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (2007). Jeff Horn, The Path Not Taken: French Industrialization in the Age of Revolution, 1750- 1830 (2006). David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus (1969). Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J.H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (1982).
9/26 No class.
10/3 Session 5. Enlightenment. Read the following: Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, 2 vols. (1966-69): vol. 1, The Rise of Modern Paganism: “Overture” (1 and 2), chapter 4 “The retreat from Reason” and chapter 5 “The Era of Pagan Christianity;” vol. 2, The Science of Freedom: chapter 2 “Progress” and chapter 7 “The Science of Society.” Darrin M. McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (2001), Introduction, chapter 1 and Conclusions. Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth- Century Europe (1991), Introduction, chapters 5 and 6 and Conclusion. Carla Hesse, The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern (2002), especially chapters 5 and 6. Jonathan Israel, introductions to Radical Enlightenment (2001), pp. 3-22, and Enlightenment Contested (2006), pp. 3-42. Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (1984).
Supplementary Readings: Keith M. Baker, Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics (1975). Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (1995); The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (1984). Dan Edelstein, The Enlightenment: A Genealogy (2010). Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (1994); Becoming a Woman in the Age of Letters (2009). Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (orig. 1962, trans. 1989). Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (2007). Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750 (2001). Reinhard Koselleck, Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society (1988). John McManners, Death and the Enlightenment (1981). Thomas Munck, The Enlightenment. A Comparative Social History 1721-1794 (2000), especially chapters 1-5. Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment Against Empire (2003), especially chapters 1-2. Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment (2001). Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich, eds., The Enlightenment in National Context (1981). John Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples 1680-1760 (2005). Helena Rosenblatt, “The Christian Enlightenment,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity, Volume VII, Enlightenment, Reawakening, and Revolution, 1660-1815), ed., S.J. Brown and T. Tackett (2006), pp. 283-301; Rousseau and Geneva: From the First Discourse to the Social Contract, 1749-1762 (1997). Emma Rothschild, Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment (2002). David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (2008).
10/10 No class.
10/17 Session 6. Further Enlightenment. Read Enlightenment articles in the December 2010 American Historical Review (Volume 115, Issue 5); see especially the introduction (1340-1341), William Max Nelson’s “Making Men: Enlightened Ideas of Racial Engineering” (1364-1394), and Karen O’Brien’s “The Return of the Enlightenment” (1426-1435).
Also read two books from the supplementary list from the last session.
10/24 Session 7. French Revolution. Read the following: Albert Soboul, A Short History of the French Revolution, 1789-1799 (1977). François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution (trans. 1981), especially “The French Revolution is Over,” “The Revolutionary Catechism,” and “De Tocqueville and the Problem of the French Revolution.” Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution (trans. 1991).
Supplementary readings: Keith M. Baker, Inventing the French Revolution (1990). Keith M. Baker, Colin Lucas, and François Furet, eds., The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture (1987-1994). Suzanne Desan, The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France (2004). William Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution (1980, 1999). Eric Hobsbawm, Echoes of the Marseillaise (1990), especially chapter 4: “Surviving Revision.” Olwen Hufton, Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution (1992). Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution (1984). John Markoff, The Abolition of Feudalism: Peasants, Lords and Legislators in the French Revolution (1996).
Two good anthologies: Gary Kates, ed., The French Revolution: Recent Debates and New Controversies (2006). Ronald Schechter, ed., The French Revolution: The Essential Readings (2001).
Nineteenth-century classics: Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. Jules Michelet, History of the French Revolution, especially chapters 1-4. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Ancien Régime and the Revolution.
10/31 Session 8. Revolution in Europe and Beyond. Read the following: T.C.W. Blanning, The French Revolution in Germany (1983), intro. and chapters 1-4, 8. Linda Colley, Britons: forging the nation (1992), chapters 4, 8. John A. Davis, “1799: The Santafede and the Crisis of the Ancien Régime in Southern Italy” in: J. Davis and P. Ginsborg, eds, Society and Politics in the Age of the Risorgimento (2002). Marc Raeff, Understanding Imperial Russia (1986), chapter 5
Supplementary readings: Read something else from last week’s supplementary list and something from the following: Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (2004); A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (2004). Janet Polasky, Revolution in Brussels, 1787-1793 (1987). Jeremy Popkin, You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery (2010). Simon Schama, Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780-1813 (1977).
11/7 Session 9. Gender, Family, and Sexuality. Read the following: Caroline Ford, Divided Houses: Religion and Gender in Modern France (2005). Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (1987), chapters 3, 7-9.
Supplementary Readings: Catherine Gallagher and Thomas Laqueur, eds., The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century (1987). Isabel Hull, Sexuality, State, and Civil Society in Germany, 1700-1815 (1996). David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli, eds., Family Life in the Long Nineteenth Century, 1789-1913, Volume 2 of The History of the European Family (2002). Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (1990). Peter Laslett and Richard Wall, eds., Household and Family in Past Time (1972). Jeffrey Merrick, Order and Disorder Under the Ancien Régime (2007). Mary Poovey, Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England (1988). Londa L. Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (1989). Martine Segalen, Love and Power in the Peasant Family: Rural France in the Nineteenth Century. Robert B. Shoemaker, Gender in English Society, 1650-1850: The Emergence of Separate Spheres? (1998). Bonnie Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice (1998). David G. Troyansky, Old Age in the Old Regime: Image and Experience in Eighteenth- Century France (1989). Randolph Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution, Vol. I: Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London (1998).
11/14 Session 10. Industrialization, Urbanization, and Technology. Read the following: Raphael Samuel, “The Workshop of the World: Steam Power and Hand Technology in Mid-Victorian Britain,” History Workshop (1977). David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus (1969), chapters 1 and 2. Charles Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin, “Historical Alternatives to Mass Production: Politics, Markets and Technology in 19th-century Industrialization,” Past and Present 108 (Aug 1985), 133-76. Patrice Higonnet, Paris, Capital of the World (2002), chapters 1 and 8.
Supplementary Readings: Elinor Accampo, Industrialization, Family and Class Relations: Saint Chamond, 1815- 1914 (1989). Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (1962), chapters 1, 2 and 3. John Merriman, The Red City: Limoges and the French Nineteenth Century (1985). John Merriman, ed., Consciousness and Class Experience in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1979). Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation. The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (1944). Deborah Valenze, The First Industrial Woman (1995).
11/21 Session 11. Social Classes. Read the following: David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (1990), chapters 1-2. Ute Frevert, “Bourgeois Honour. Middle-Class Duelists in Germany from the Late 18th to the early 20th Century,” in: D. Blackbourn and R.J. Evans, The German Bourgeoisie (1991), pp. 255-292. Edward P. Thompson, TheMaking of the English Working Class (1963), 9-185, 350-400, 711-746. Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (1988, 1999), chapters 3-5. William Sewell, Work and Revolution in France (1980), chapters 7-9. Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of Class (1983), chapter 3 “Rethinking Chartism.” “The Working Class?” -- debate: Geoff Eley and Keith Nield, “Farewell to the Working Class?,” Joan Scott, “The ‘Class’ We Have Lost,” Eley and Nield’s “Reply,” International Labor and Working-Class History, n.57, Spring 2000, pp. 1-30, 69-75, 76- 87. Anna Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Classes (1995).
Supplementary readings: Arno Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime (1981), Introduction and chapter 1. Marta Petrusewicz, Latifundium (1996), Introduction, chapters 6, 7. And books you haven’t read from last week.
11/28 Session 12. Reform and the Revolutions of 1848. Jonathan Sperber, The European Revolutions 1848-1852 (1994, 2005). Maurice Agulhon, The Republican Experiment, 1848-1852 (1983), especially chapters 1- 4.
Supplementary Readings: Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Sir Lewis Namier, 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals (1944). E.H. Labrousse, “1848, 1830, 1789: How Revolutions are Born,” in: Crouzet, Challoner, Stern, Essays in European Economic History (1969).
12/5 Session 13. Nation, Nationalism, Order, and State-Building. Read the following: David Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680–1800 (2001). David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (1984), part I (Eley): chapters 8 and 9; part II (Blackbourn): chapters IV and V. Philip Nord, The Republican Moment (1995), Introduction, chapters 1, 2 and 6. Silvana Patriarca, “Indolence and Regeneration: Tropes and Tensions of Risorgimento Patriotism,” The American Historical Review 110.2 (2005), pp. 380-408.
Supplementary Readings: Jerome Blum, The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe (1978), chapters 16-19. Norman Davies, God’s Playground: a History of Poland (1979), II, chapters 1-4. John A. Davis, Conflict and Control: Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century Italy (1988); “The Risorgimento and the ‘Southern Problem,’” in Davis, ed., Gramsci and Italy’s Passive Revolution (1979). Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1975), pp. 3-31, 80-81, 120-228, 276-308. Jan Goldstein, Console and Classify. The French Psychiatric Profession in the 19th Century (1987), chapters 2 and 3. Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867 (2002). Adrian Lyttelton, “Landlords, Peasants and the Limits of Liberalism,” in Gramsci and Italy’s Passive Revolution, ed. by John Davis (1979) 104-135. Silvana Patriarca, Numbers and Nationhood: Writing Statistics in Nineteenth-Century Italy (1996). Alan Sked, The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 1815-1918 (1989), pp. 187- 218. Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society (1980), parts I and II. Larissa Zakharova, “Autocracy and the Reforms of 1861-1874 in Russia” and John Bushnell, “Miliutin and the Balkan War” in: B. Eklof, J. Bushnell, L. Zakharova, eds., Russia’s Great Reforms, 1855-1881 (1994).
12/12 Session 14. European Culture In and Across the Nineteenth Century. Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind (1976). Jo Burr Margadant, ed., The New Biography (2000).
Supplementary Readings: David Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780-1918 (1998). Callum G. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800- 2000 (2001). Steve Bruce, ed. Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis (1992). Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant (1988); The Village of Cannibals (1993). Jan Goldstein, The Post-Revolutionary Self: Politics and Psyche in France, 1750-1850 (2005). David Hempton, Methodism: Empire of the Spirit (2005). We may add titles to the list, depending upon student interests.