Dr. K. Donohue Fall 2019 234 Powers Hall Office Hours: M 3:30:- 5:00, 6:30 – 7:30 989-774-3374(office) T 9:15-9:45 pm 989-832-3992 (home) (not before 9:00 a.m. or after 8:00 pm or by appointment [email protected] HST 600: HISTORIOGRAPHY This course asks you to think about a range of questions related to the discipline of history: What is history? How have historians approached the study of the past? How and why has the approach to the study of history changed? Our goal will be to understand the dynamic nature of scholarship within (and outside) the discipline. We will spend most of the semester examining several of the most influential approaches to the writing of history but will bookend our examination by beginning and ending with the reflections of historians on the historical discipline. Carl Schleicher, Der Bücherwurm At the end of the course, you will have a chance to explore and reflect on both the historiography of a field in which you are particularly interested and the ways in which the changes we have explored throughout the course influenced the historiography of the field you have chosen to examine. Finally, throughout the course, you will be asked to practice the professional skills of a historian by participating actively as an audience member in several guest lectures and workshops. BOOKS (Several of these works are available online through the library): Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities Braudel, Ferdinand. The Mediterranean, Vol. 1 Brown, Kate. Plutopia Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe,, Darton, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French History Eley, Geoff, A Crooked Line Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison Gaddis, John Lewis. The Landscape of History Green, Anna and Kathleen Troup. The Houses of History (2nd EDITION)*** Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard and Jürgen Kocka, Comparative and Transnational History Hubbard, Phil and Rob Kitchin, eds. Key Thinkers on Space and Place Ogburn, Miles. Spaces of Modernity Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence Rius, Marx for Beginners Rose, Sonya. What is Gender History Said, Edward. Orientalism Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale ASSIGNMENTS: Active Participation in Discussion (30%) Quizzes and Questions as needed (10%) Journal (15%) You will need a folder with paper and should bring it to every class. This is your chance to reflect on the readings and class discussions. I will be looking for mastery and understanding of historiography, some indication of how the course is prompting you to examine your assumptions about history, and some evidence of creative thinking as you make connections and tie together various ideas from among the entire body of scholarship we are reading. Feel free to write in the first person. Professional Attendance (10%) You will need to attend four events in which a historian is either speaking or running a workshop. For each of these events, you will need to submit a short type-written account. Two of your submissions should explore links between the talk and our course material. Two should summarize a question you asked and the speaker’s response. If you choose to fulfill this requirement by attending one of the events associated with the Blackburn, Bolger, Constitution Day Speaker Series, a formal talk by a partner university history exchange professor or a dissertation defense, you do not need to run it by me. All other talks must be approved before you attend for you to receive credit. Final Paper (35%) The major assignment for this class consists of two parts. The first part asks you to produce a 12- 15-page historiographical essay on a historical topic of your choice. The topic should be broad enough so that you are reading works (10-15) that are important not only to scholars who specialize in your topic but also those who are in the larger field. It is fine and indeed a good idea to link your historiographical essay to your MA thesis, your dissertation, one of your Plan B papers, etc. But whereas those assignments would probably ask you to produce a narrow and exhaustive historiography, I am asking you to produce a broad historiography consisting only of the most significant works. You should feel free and you are indeed encouraged to run your bibliography for this assignment by a faculty member who specializes in your topic. The second part of the assignment asks you to set your historiography within a broader historiographical context, namely the changing Women at Writing Desk, Lesser Ury approaches to history that are the subject of this course. You should identify the ways in which broader historiographical currents have and, just as importantly, have not influenced the historiography of your topic and then, of course, try to explain why. We will meet individually to discuss your topic. DATE DUE READINGS WHAT IS HISTORY August 27 The Historiographical Approach BEFORE YOU COME TO CLASS: Watch Video: What Is Historiography? Read (in the following order) 1. Green and Troup, The Houses of History (2nd edition) Chapter 1 & 2 2. Gaddis, The Landscape of History 3. Journal (1-1.5 pages, double spaced, typewritten) APPROACHES September 3 Annales School: Total History and the Longue Durée (Read in the following order): 1. Green and Troup, 106-114 2. Braudel, The Mediterranean, Vol. 1.: Read: Table of Contents and then 17- 24, 231-354, 418-61 3. Journal Sign up for Individual Meetings September 6 Graduate Student Meeting September 6 Individual Meetings September 10 Marxism and History (Read in the following order): 1. Rius, Marx for Beginners, 66-143 2. Green and Troup, Chapter 3 3. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, Vintage Books, 1966), Preface and chapters 1-7 and pages 807-36 4. “Antonio Gramsci and the Idea of Hegemony” http://www- personal.umich.edu/~hfox/gramsci.html 5. Nicki Cole, “What Is Cultural Hegemony” https://www.thoughtco.com/cultural-hegemony-3026121 4. Jackson Lears, “The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities,” The American Historical Review 90.3 (1985), 567-top of 579. 5. Journal September 17 Microhistory (Read in the following order): 1. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale 2. Robert Darnton, “Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre” in Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French History 3. Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture” 4. Green and Troup, Chapter 8 5. Journal September 21 SUBMITTED BY EMAIL: Annotated Bibliography for the historical topic you will be exploring for your final historiographical essay. For this assignment, list the books in chronological order by publication date rather than alphabetical order by author’s last name. The bibliography for the final paper should, of course, be in alphabetical order. Ideally you will have discussed your topic and your list of books with the faculty member in the History Department whose work is most closely related to your topic before submitting it. September 24 Foucault Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a2dLVx8THA Read (in any order): 1. Green and Troup, Chapter 11 2. Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison 3. Stephen Shapiro Reader Workbook (on Blackboard) 4. Journal October 1 Gender and History (Read in the following order): 1. Sonya Rose, What is Gender History 2. Joan W. Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis" American Historical Review 91 (1986): 1053-75. 3. Laura Lee Downs, “If ‘Woman’ is Just an Empty Category, Then Why Am I Afraid to Walk Alone at Night? Identity Politics Meets the Postmodern Subject” Comparative Studies in Society and History 35, no. 2 (Apr., 1993): 414-437. 4. Joan W. Scott, "The Tip of the Volcano" Comparative Studies in Society and History 35, No. 2 (Apr., 1993): 438-443. 5. John Tosh, “What Should Historians do with Masculinity? Reflections on Nineteenth- Century Britain,” History Workshop Journal 38 (1994): 179-202. 6. Green and Troup, Chapter 10 7. Journal October 8 Nations 1. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities 2. Journal October 15 World/Global/Transnational History 1. Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence 2. Ian Terrell, “What Is Transnational History.” https://iantyrrell.wordpress.com/what-is-transnational-history/ 3. Journal October 22 Comparative History 1. Kate Brown, Plutopia 2. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka, Comparative and Transnational History: Central European Approaches and New Perspectives, 1-51 3. Journal October 29 Post-Colonialism 1. Edward Said, Orientalism 1-112 2. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe,, 1-46, 72-113, 3. Green and Troup, Chapter 12 4. Barbara Weinstein, “History without a Cause? Grand Narratives, World History, and the Postcolonial Dilemma,” International Review of Social History 50 (2005), 71-93. 5. Journal November 5 The Spatial Turn 1. Miles Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity: London’s Geographies 1680-1780, Chapters 1, 2, 3 2. Courtney J. Campbell, “Space, Place and Scale: Human Geography and Spatial History in Past and Present” https://academic.oup.com/past/article/239/1/e23/2957256 3. Phil Hubbard and Rob Kitchin, Key Thinkers on Space and Place: Bourdieu, Certeau, Harvey, LeFebvre, Wiliams, Wallerstein, Davis, Hall, hooks, Anderson, Foucault, Said 4. Journal November 9 First draft of the historiographical essay due on Blackboard. This draft is focused on the historiography of your topic. A Few Additional Approaches November 12 Read: 1. Green and Troup, Chapters 4, 6, 7, 9, 13-16 2. Read first six pages of each essay on Blackboard. Rank according to how closely they conform to a historiographical essay. 3. Journal WHAT IS HISTORY REVISITED November 19 A Historian’s Journey 1. Geoff Eley, A Crooked Line 2.