HIST 80000: Literature of Modern Europe I (Draft) CUNY Graduate
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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 <hhttp://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1008> P.H.H. Vries, “Are Coal and Colonies Really Crucial? Kenneth Pomeranz and the Great Divergence,” in Journal of World History 12, No. 2 (Fall 2001): 407-446. 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