Introduction to History
History 691P
Prof. Bruce Laurie
Prof. Daniel Gordon
This course is an introduction to the varieties of history. The material is organized as a series of dilemmas that every historian faces: whether to focus on continuity or change, whether to study ones own country or a foreign country, whether to write about the distant past or the recent past, and so forth. Students who develop their own approach in full awareness of its alternatives are more likely to do outstanding work than students who believe there is only one way to think about the past.
Each week we will read a common set of readings, listed in bold letters below. These readings are available on the librarys electronic reserve system: password Voltaire.
But three books, on order at the Amherst Bookstore (previously called Atticus),
Are also required: Anderson, Imagined Communities; Tocqueville,
The Old Regime and the French Revolution; and Hofstatder, Anti-Intellectualism
in American Life.
Students must participate in class discussion and write three papers. Two of these papers (5-7 pages each) will be based on the recommended readings that appear each week, or other readings approved in advance by the instructors. The third paper (12-15 pages) will be about a great historian or great moment in history—see topics at end of syllabus. For the shorter papers, you will sign up early in the course and make oral presentations in connection with the papers. The longer paper is due December 16. We will discuss writing strategies—sources, structures, and themes—in the first few classes and throughout the semester.
Sept. 14 Introduction.
and Richard Pells, American Historians Would Do Well to
Get Out of the
Country.
Sept. 21. Continuity or Change?
Fernand Braudel, extracts from On History
(University of Chicago Press, 1980).
Peter Baehr, Identifying the Unprecedented: Hannah
Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Critique of Sociology, The American Sociological
Review (Dec., 2002).
Paper 1. The Impact of the American Revolution. Charles and Mary Beard, The Rise of American Civilization; Richard Hofstadter, The Founding Fathers in The American Political Tradition; Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution.
J.D. Kovach
Paper 2. Women
and the American Revolution. Mary
Beth Norton, Libertys Daughters (1996 ed.), Linda Kerber, Women of the
Republic. Tara Stever
Paper 3. The Legacy of Slavery. Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom; Orlando Patterson, Rituals of Blood. Alternatively, Steven Hahn, A Nation Under our Feet; David Blight, Race and Reunion
Paper 4. The Annales School. The works of Braudel, Marc Bloch, and Lucien Febvre; for praise of the school, see Peter Burke, The French Historiographical Revolution; for criticism, see Franois Furet, Beyond the Annales in In the Workshop of History
Sept. 28. The Familiar or the Exotic? Time.
Timothy Garton Ash, extract from History of the
Present (Random House, 1999).
A. Leo Oppenheim, extract from Ancient Mesopotamia:
Portrait of a Dead Civilization (University of Chicago Press, 1964).
Guest Faculty, Audrey
Altstadt
Paper 1. Uses of Presentism. Arthur M. Schlessigner, The Age of Jackson, and its critics.
Paper 2. Uses of Presentism. Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundation of Black America; Mechal Sobel, The World They Made Together.
Paper 3. Uses of Presentism. Compare at least two biographies of Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy, etc., written at least a generation apart. John Zavisza and Christian Collins.
Paper 4. The Exotic. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels and other books. Or, Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being and other writings.
Oct. 5. The Familiar or the Exotic? Space.
Gary Wills, extract from Inventing America:
Jeffersons Declaration of Independence (Doubleday, 1978)
Louis
Dumont, extract from Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its
Implications (University of Chicago Press, 1970).
Guest
Faculty, John Higginson
Paper 1. Comparison as a Bridge Between the Familiar and Exotic. Carl N. Degler, Neither Black Nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and The United States; Peter Kolchin, Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom John Diffley
Paper 2. More
Comparison. James Q. Whitman,
Harsh Justice and Two Concepts of Privacy Caitlin Shuster
Paper 3.
Writing About Ones Own Tradition.
Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, and its critics Meghan Gelardi
Paper 4. Writing About the Other. Works of Louis Dumont or Jonathan Spence or Anthony Pagden Katie Patt
Oct. 12. Science or Literature?
T.H. Buckle, extract from History of Civilization in
England and T.B. Macaulay, History, both in The Varieties of History:
From Voltaire to the Present, ed. Fritz Stern (Meridian Books, 1956).
Clifford Geertz, Thick Description, in The
Interpretation of Cultures (Basic Books, 1973).
V.O. Key, extract from Southern Politics in State and Nation (Vintage Books,
1949).
Paper 1. European
positivism and Max Weber. H.
Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society and other writings by or about Weber Noel
Hudson
Paper 2. Durkheim. Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method and other writings by or about Durkheim.
Paper 3. The New
Political history and its Discontents.
Samuel P. Hays, American Political history as Social Analysis; Lee
Benson, Toward the Scientific Study of History; Richard L. McCormick, The Party
Period and Public Policy J.D. Kovach
Paper 4.
American History in the Impressionistic Style. Isaac Kramnick, Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism; John
Diggins, The Lost Soul of American Politics; Eric Foner, Free Labor, Free Soil
Men. Lora Sandhusen
Paper 5. European History as Literature. Writings of Macaulay or Simon Schama.
Oct 19 . Macro-History or Micro-History?
J.R. McNeill and William H. McNeill, extract from The
Human Web: A Birds-Eye View of World History (W.W. Norton, 2003)
William Hinton, extract from Fanshen: A Documentary of
Revolution in a Chinese Village (Vintage Books, 1966).
Paper 1. Big Pictures. William McNeill, The Rise of the West; David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations; Immanuel Wallerstein, Capitalist Agriculture.
Paper 2. More
Big Pictures. Alexander Crosby,
The Columbian Exchange and Jared Diamon, Guns, Germs, and Steel. Meghan
Gelardi
Paper 3. Small Pictures. Emanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou; William A. Sheridan, The Nazi Seizure of Power; Alfred Young, The Shoemaker and the Revolution.
Paper 4. Small
Pictures. The World of Carlo
Ginzburg. Carrie Barske
Oct. 26. Social or political?
Karl Marx, extract from The German Ideology in The
Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (W.W. Norton, 1978).
Raymond Aron, extract from Marx in Main Currents of
Sociological Thought (Basic Books, 1965)
Alexis de Tocqueville, extracts from Democracy in
America, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Library of America, 2004).
Paper 1. Classic works of Social History. The writings of E.P. Thompson, Natalie Zemon Davis, R. and H. Lind, Middletown, Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic.
Paper 2.
Classic Works of Political History. The writings of Quentin Skinner, John Pocock, and Richard Pipes. Katie Patt and
Matthew Watson
Paper 3. Theoretical Defense of Political History. Keith Baker, Inventing the French Revolution and Tony Judt, The Clown in Regal Purple.
Richard Hofstader, The Age of Reform
Nov. 2. Professional History or Public History?
Hayden White, extract from Tropics of Discourse
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978)
J.G.A. Pocock, extract from Machiavellian Moment
(Princeton,
Barbara Tuchman, extract from The Guns of August
(Macmillan. 1962)
Guest faculty, Marla Miller
Paper 1. The work of Thomas Cahill: How the Irish Saved
Civilization, The Gift of the Jews, etc. Christian Collins
Paper 2.
Popularizing the Complex.
A.N. Wilson, Jesus; Dava Sobel, Galileos Daughter or Longitude; Jason
Goodwyn, Lords of the Horizon. Peter Wong
Paper 3. Bridging the Academy and General Public. Daniel Goldhagen, Hitlers Willing
Executioners, and its critics. Noel Hudson and Amanda Geno
Nov. 9, History Writing or Historically Informed Writing?
George Orwell, Why I Write (1946); extract from Homage
to Catalonia (1938); Politics and the English Language (1946)
Walter Lippman, extracts from his writings
Guest faculty, Sigrid Schmalzer
Historians Brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in Lawrence
v. Texas (2003)
Paper 1. History and Theater. Arthur Miller The Crucible; Jack Beeson, Lizzie Borden.
Paper 2.
History and the Novel.
Robert Penn Warren, All the Kings Men, Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two
Cities. Carrie Barske
Paper 3.
History and Film. D.W.
Griffith, Birth of a Nation; A Resnais, Last Year at Marienbad; filems by
Oliver Stone, John Sayles. Yveline Alexis and John Zavisza
Nov. 16. Sources of Identity: Nation, Religion, Race, or Gender?
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (Verso,
1983—or other editions)
David R. Roediger, extract from The Wages of Whiteness
(Verso, 1991)
Joan Scott, Gender: A Useful Category of Historical
Analysis (1986)
Max Weber, extracts from The Protestant Ethic and The
Sociology of World Religions
Guest faculty, Heather Cox Richardson (to be confirmed)
Paper 1. Nationalism. Karl Marx, On the Jewsih Question; Anthony Marx, Faith in Nation; Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism; Carlton Hayes, Essays on Nationalism
Paper 2. Gender in History. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct; Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry; Lisa Norling, Captain Ahab Had a Wife.
Paper 3. Gender
in Victorian England. Peter Gay,
The Bourgeois Experience; George K. Behlmer, Friends of the Family. Jessica
Lemieux
Paper 4. Race
and it Variants. Works by
Roediger. Noel Ignatiev, How the
irish Became White; Matthew Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color. Yveline
Alexis and
Caro Pinto
Nov 23. Resistance or Conformity?
James C. Scott, extract Weapons of the Weak: Everyday
Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale,
1986)
Eugene Genovese, extract Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World
the Slaves Made (Pantheon)
Readings by Goldhagen, Hillberg, Browning on Nazism (add
to reserve)
Paper 1. The Thesis of the Middle Ground. Richard White, The Middle Ground.
Paper 2. The
Elkins Thesis. Stanley Elkins,
Slavery, and its critics. Peter Wong and
Amanda Geno
Paper 3. Moral Economy. E.P. Thompson, The Moral Economy of the English Crowd; Peter Linebaugh, London Hanged; Marcus Rediker, The Many Headed Hydra.
12. Great Moments in History.
Papers:
1492--Samuel Elliot Morrison, Kathryn Merriam--Francis Jennings
The Reformation—works of Steven Ozement, Jessica Lemieux--Hegel, Philosophy of History
The French Revolution—works of Furet, Tocqueville, Michelet
The Cold War—Melvyn Leffler, William Appleman Williams, John Lewis Gaddis 1989,
—Timothy Garton Ash, Charles Maier
(Dissolution), John Diffley
13. Great Historians.
Papers:
Hannah Arendt
Philippe Aries
Bernard Bailyn
Marc Bloch
Asa Briggs
Jacob Burckhardt
Natalie Ziemon Davis
M.I. Finley
Michel Foucault
Friedrich Engels
Eugene D. Genovese
Elie Halevi
Richard Hofstadter
Christopher Hill
E. .J. Hobsbawm
Reinhart Koselleck
C.L.R. James
A.O. Lovejoy
Machiavelli
T.B. Macauley
Edmund Morgan
E.P. Thompson
G. M. Trevelyan
Thucydides
C.V. Wedgwood