Theories and Methods in Historical Studies
A Systematic Introduction
Fall 2003
MA Course, 4 Credits
Sorin Antohi
CEU University Professor
History Department
The course is a systematic introduction to the theory and methodology of historical studies: a mental map. The most significant theories and methods, schools and trends will be presented, against the wider background provided by the history of historical writing, epistemology, and other disciplines. The main objective of this course is to make sure that students, even when conducting very detailed empirical research, have a comprehensive, contemporary representation of what historical studies look like, as a field and as a discourse. Also, the course is meant to help bridge the endemic gap between 'practitioners' and 'theorists', by outlining a professional canon that is relevant to both.
Course Requirements
Your progress in the course will be evaluated as follows:
Midterm Paper and Its Oral Presentation30% of the overall grade
Term Paper 50%
Class Participation 20%
Class participation means regular attendance and in-class comments and questions related to the weekly lectures and readings. The midterm paper is a ca. seven-page essay on one of the course topics; it is due in the beginning of the sixth week; it will have to be presented orally in the seminar section of the class; students will make these oral presentations in alphabetical order, starting with the sixth week. The term paper is a ca. fifteen-page project in which students are encouraged to examine their own MA research topic and their draft MA thesis from a methodological-theoretical viewpoint. Term paper topics have to be discussed with and approved by the instructor; term papers are due in the beginning of the twelfth week.
Required Readings
The books listed below should be read entirely; some of their chapters are also included in the course reader, in order to be discussed in greater depth.
Ankersmit, F.R. and Hans Hellner (eds.), A New Philosophy of History,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Breisach, Ernest, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval and Modern, Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1983.
Burke, Peter (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing, University Park,
PA: The Pennsylvania University Press, 1991.
Cohen, Ralph and Michael S. Roth (eds.), History and...Histories within the Human Sciences, Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1995.
Hunt, Lynn (ed.), The New Cultural History, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989.
Iggers, Georg G., Historiography in the Twentieth Century, Middletown, CT:
Wesleyan University Press, 1997.
Munslow, Alun, The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies, London: New
York, 2000.
Rüsen, Jörn, Studies in Metahistory, Pretoria: Human Sciences Research
Council, 1993.
Stanford, Michael, A Companion to the Study of History, Oxford: Blackwell,
1994.
White, Hayden, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth
Century Europe, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.
Course Agenda
First Week: Introduction. Mapping Historical Studies Today
Readings:
Peter Burke, "Overture: the New History, its Past and its
Future", in Burke, ed., New Perspectives in Historical Studies, pp.
1-23.
Alun Munslow, The Routledge Companion to Historical
Studies, pp. 1-20 ("History Today. Critical Perspectives").
Second Week: History and Theory: Dialogue or Fusion? And What Philosophyof History?
Readings:
M.C.Lemon, The Discipline of History and the History of
Thought, London: Routledge, 1995, pp. 134-174 ("History and Theory")
and pp. 265-7 (notes).
Arthur C. Danto, "The Decline and Fall of the Analytical Philosophy of History", in Ankersmit and Kellner (eds.), A New Philosophy of History, pp. 70-85.
Chris Lorenz, "Historical Knowledge and Historical Reality: A Plea for 'Internal Realism'", History and Theory, 33, 3, 1994, pp. 297-327.
Third Week: History, Literary Theory, Epistemology: The Narrative StrikesBack
Readings:
Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century, pp.118-133 ("The 'Linguistic Turn': The End of History as a Scholarly
Discipline?") and 168-70 (notes).
Alan Megill, "Does Narrative Have a Cognitive Value of Its Own?", in Walter Blanke, Friedrich Jaeger and Thomas Sandküller (eds.), Dimensionen der Historik. Geschichtstheorie, Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Geschichtskultur heute, Köln: Böhlau,
1998, pp.41-52.
Paul Veyne, Writing History. Essay on Epistemology,
translated by Mina Moore-Rinvolucri, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1984, pp. 117-143 ("Theories, Types, Concepts")
and 308-310 (notes).
Fourth Week: History and Social Theory: Is History a Social Science?
Readings:
Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century,
pp. 65-77 ("Critical Theory and Social Theory: 'Historical Social
Science in the Federal Republic of Germany") and 160-2 (notes).
Peter Burke, History and Social Theory, Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1992, pp. 1-21 ("Theorists and Historians").
Fifth Week: History and Geography: Common Legacies, New Rapprochements
Reading:
Leonard Guelke, "The Relations between Geography and
History Reconsidered", History and Theory, Vol. 36, No.2, 1997, pp.
216-234.
Sixth Week: History, Psychology, and Psychoanalysis: From mentalités to theSymptom and (Back) to Memory
Readings:
Fred Weinstein, "Psychohistory and the Crisis of the Social
Sciences", History and Theory, Vol. 34, No. 4, 1995, pp.299-319.
Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan, "Setting the Framework", in Jay Winter, Emmanuel Sivan (eds.), War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 6-39.
Seventh Week: History, Ethnography, Anthropology, Cultural Studies:Culture Revisited
Readings:
Clifford Geertz, "History and Anthropology";
Renato Rosaldo, "Response to Clifford Geertz";
Roger D. Abrahams, "History and Folklore: Luck-visits, House-attacks, and Playing Indian in Early America",
all in Ralph Cohen and Michael S. Roth, History and...Histories within the Human Sciences, pp. 248-62; pp. 263-7; pp. 268-95, respectively.
Eighth Week: The Local and the Global: Microhistory, Comparative History,
World History
Readings:
Giovanni Levi, "On Microhistory", in Peter Burke, New
Perspectives on Historical Writing, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991,
pp. 93-113.
Chris Lorenz, "Comparative Historiography: Problems and Perspectives", History and Theory, 38, 1, 1999, pp. 25-39.
Jürgen Kocka, "Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg", History and Theory, 38, 1, 1999, pp. 40-50.
Peter Burke, "Western Historical Thinking in a Global Perspective -- 10 Theses", in Jörn Rüsen, ed., Western Historical Thinking. An Intercultural Debate, New York-Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2002, pp. 15-30.
Ninth Week: Historical Experience and the Ontology of the Past: From Histori(ci)sm to Postmodernism
Readings:
F.R. Ankersmit, History and Tropology. The Rise and Fall of
Metaphor, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994, pp. 182-
238 ("Historism and Postmodernism. A Phenomenology of
Historical Experience").
Tenth Week: History of Ideas: The New Total History?
Reading:
Donald Kelley, "What is Happening to the History of Ideas?",
Journal of the History of Ideas, 1990, pp. 3-25.
Eleventh Week: History Didactics: The Theory of Practice
Reading:
Jörn Rüsen, Studies in Metahistory, pp. 187-202 ("The
development of history didactics in West Germany: towards a new
self-awareness of historical studies").
Twelfth Week: Historical Studies in a New Millennium: Contemplating the End of History, Revisiting Canons, or What?
Readings:
Lutz Niethammer, Posthistoire: Has History Come to an End? London: Verso, 1992, pp. 7-23 ("Retrogression: Loss or Overcoming of History?), and pp. 135-152 ("The Dissolution of History").
Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century,
pp. 134-147 ("From the Perspective of the 1990s", "Concluding Remarks") and pp. 171-175 (notes, "Suggested Readings").
Jörn Rüsen, Studies in Metahistory, pp. 203-219 ("New
directions in historical studies").
Paul Veyne, Writing History, pp. 213-235 ("Lengthening the
Questionnaire") and 319-22 (notes).