Theory and Method

MSt/MPhil in British and European History, 2013

Theories and Methods

This is the full list of weekly topics from among which seminar leaders will choose eight. The order here is not necessarily the schedule of the classes themselves, which will be decided by seminar leaders. Class leaders will designate the topics to be covered by each class and in what order, and will allocate readings, presentations, expected work, etc.

As an introduction to the implication of theory for the study of history, one might start with:

AHR Forum ‘Historiographic “Turns” in Critical Perspective’, American Historical Review 117:3 (2012).

Rublack, Ulinka (ed.) A Concise Companion to History (2002). There is no textbook for the course, but this work covers many of the same themes.

1. POWER

Alongside the large-scale historical processes of state formation and the emancipatory narrative of citizenship and enfranchisement, historians have become interested in examining the micropolitics of power and governmental practice – what it meant to become a ‘subject’ of the modern state. This entails looking at the new relationships between states and their subjects that emerged as government entered into ever more areas of human behaviour and interaction in the 19th century, creating new fields of knowledge and official expertise, and new regimes of control and freedom. The model has been furthest developed for the 19th-century liberal state, and we will consider its applicability to post-liberal political systems.

Essential reading

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish, (1975 Fr; 1977 Eng), ch. 1

Scott, James. Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have failed (1998)
See also review symposium in American Historical Review 106 (Feb. 2001), 106-129

Further reading

Brook, Timothy. Vermeer’s Hat. The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (2008). Esp chaps 1 and 6.

Conversation on Transnational History, American Historical Review 111 (2006), 1441-64

Cooper, Frederick. Colonialism in Question. Theory, Knowledge, History (2005). Chapter on globalization

Davis, Natalie Zemon. ‘What is Universal about History?’ in Gunilla Budde, Sebastian Conrad, Oliver Janz, Transnationale Geschichte: Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien (2005), 15-20
— ‘Decentering History: Local Stories and Cultural Crossings in a Global World’, History and Theory 50 (2011), pp. 188-202

Hopkins, A.G. (ed.). Globalization in World History (2002)

Iriye, Akira. Global Community: the Role of International Organisations in the Making of the Contemporary World (2002). Seminal but problematic

Iriye, Akira. The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History (2009)

Levitt, Peggy, & Sanjeev Khagram (eds). The Transnational Studies Reader: Interdisciplinary intersections and Innovations (2007)

Lieberman, Victor. Strange Parallels. Southeast Asia in Global context c.800-1830. Volume 2: Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia and the Islands (2009). pp. 1-9, 117-22, 895-908. See also the review by Alan Strathern in Journal of Global History 7 (2012):129–142.

Pollock, Sheldon. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (2006), esp. the introduction

Osterhammel, Jürgen, & Niels P. Peterson. Globalization: A Short History ( 2005)

Werner, Michael, & Benedict Zimmermann. ‘Beyond Comparison: Histoire croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity’, Theory and History, 45 (2006), 30-50

Winseck, Dwayne, & Robert Pike, Communication and Empire: Media, Markets and Globalization, 1860-1930 (2007)

Early Modern

Clossey, Luke. Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions (2008)

Davis, Natalie Zemon. Trickster Travels. A Sixteenth-century Muslim between Worlds (2006)

de Vries, Jan ‘The Limits of Globalization in the Early Modern World’, Economic History Review, 63, 3 (2010), pp. 710-733.

Goldstone, Jack “The Problem of the ‘Early Modern’ World,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 41/3 (1998): 249-284, and the following debate

Porter, David (ed.) Comparative Early Modernities (Palgrave-Macmillan 2012), eg chapters by Goldstone, Bin Wong, Powers, Pomeranz

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, ‘Connected Histories: Notes Towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia’, in Modern Asian Studies 31:3 (1997)
— ‘’Holding the World in Balance: Iberian Empires, 1500-1640’, American Historical Review, 112: 5 (2007)
‘On World Historians in the Sixteenth Century’, Representations 91 (2005), pp. 26-57

Modern

Bayly, Chris. The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 (2004)

Berg, Maxime. ‘In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century’ Past and Present 182 (2004): 85-142

Horn, Gerd-Rainer, & Padraic Keney, Transnational Moments of Change. Europe 1945, 1968, 1989 (2004)

Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence. China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy (2000)

Waal, Edmund de. The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010)

3. MICROHISTORY & BEYOND

Microhistory became popular in the 1980s and 1990s, giving rise to a series of detailed local studies. How can a microhistorical perspective enrich historical study? What are the dangers of microhistory? How might microhistory fruitfully develop? What are its theoretical underpinnings; and how far does it develop a new form of historical narrative?

Essential reading

Ginzburg, Carlo. ‘Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method’, History Workshop Journal 9 (1980), 5-36, reprinted as ‘Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm’, in Ginzburg, Myths, Emblems, Clues (London, 1990), 96-127

Levi, Giovanni. ‘On Microhistory’, in P. Burke, New Perspectives on Historical Writing (1991)

Phillips, Mark Salber. ‘Distance and Historical Representation’, History Workshop Journal, 57 (Spring 2004), 123 - 141

Further reading:

Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life (2002)

Case Studies

Italy

Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (1982)

Kertzer, David. The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (1997)

Kertzer, David. Amalia's Tale: A Poor Peasant, an Ambitious Attorney, and a Fight for Justice (2008)

France

Corbin. Alain. The Life of an Unknown: The Rediscovered World of a Clog Maker in Nineteenth-century France ( 2001)
See also the special issues of Ruralia (1998, 1999) on recherches pinagotiques

Darnton, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (1985), 79-104

Davis, Natalie Zemon. The Return of Martin Guerre (1983)

Farr, James R. A Tale of Two Murders: Passion and Power in Seventeenth-Century France (2005)

Hopkin, David. Voices of the People in Nineteenth-Century France (2012). Chap 4.

Britain & Ireland

Bourke, Angela. The Burning of Bridget Cleary. A True Story (1999)

Cressy, David. Agnes Bowker’s Cat. Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England (2000)

Duffy, Eamon. The Voices of Morebath (2001)

Germany & Poland

Evans, Richard J. Tales from the German Underworld. Crime & Punishment in the Nineteenth Century (1998)

Groebner, Valentin. ‘Inside Out: Clothes, Dissimulation, and the Arts of Accounting in the Autobiography of Matthäus Schwartz, 1496-1574’ Representations 66 (spring 1999), 100-21.

Grosz, Jan. Neighbours. The Destruction of the Jewish Community at Jedwabne, Poland (2001)

Schindler, Norbert ‘The Bluntau Mill’, German History 17 (1999), 57-89

Wiesner-Hanks, Merry. The Hairy Girls (2009)

4. APPROACHES TO INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

Once the preserve of literary scholars and philosophers, intellectual history was transformed in the 1960s by the emergence of the ‘Cambridge School’ of Laslett, Pocock and Skinner, and by parallel developments in Europe. These in turn were challenged in the 1970s and 1980s by Foucault and the postmodern ‘linguistic turn’. Since then, however, intellectual history has come back strongly, rejuvenated by fresh debates over Hobbes, Enlightenment, and much else. Pressing questions include intentionality: can we recover intention? Is it important? Context: what is it and how broadly should it be understood? Reception: how did authors and readers read and interpret works?

Essential reading

Brett, Annabelle. ‘What is intellectual history now?’ in David Cannadine ed., What is History Now? (2002)

Pocock, J.G.A. ‘Introduction: The State of the Art’, in his Virtue, Commerce, and History: essays on political thought and history (1985), 1-34

Skinner, Quentin. ‘The Limits of Historical Explanations’, Philosophy 41 (1966), 199-215, followed by his articles collected in: Visions of Politics, Vol. I Regarding Method (2002)