History 298 Junior Colloquium Spring, 2008
Instructor: Seungjoo Yoon Phone: 4211
Locations and Times: Leighton 301 MW 9:50 –11:00AM F 9:40 –10:40AM
Office Hours: Leighton 209 3:00-4:00 pm at Leighton 209 & by appointment
Objective: The purpose of this course is to introduce you to a variety of approaches to the past constructed by practicing historians today. We will examine how these historians conceive of their projects of study, how they use primary sources, how they structure their narrative and analytic discussion of their topic, and what are the promises and perils of their approaches. The coverage is wide ranging with vastly disparate methodologies. It would be impossible to survey everything that different historians do. The choice of themes reflects the current interests of many members of the Carleton History Department and beyond.
The central focus of ours is on methodologies, conceptualizations, and narrative structures, but not on specific historical content.There will be much concern with debates in the politics and morals of historical studies.Much of the course will center on dissections of the approaches actually used in a range of published works embodying varying theoretical orientations and concerns. Our purpose is NOT to “know the facts” or become an expert in any of the chosen areas; the point is to find out how similar historical approaches work in different cultural areas and time periods.I hope you to keep the central question throughout the course: What, if anything, do historians have in common? As a way to address this question properly, I would encourage you to read in areas with which you are not familiar as well as in your home ground (i.e., chosen subfield).
This is also a course in which you are expected to practice history. Each one of you will have a chance to write the status of your potential comps topic against the historiographical background of your chosen sub-field. In so doing, you will experience the process of choosing a source, apply an historical approach of your choice, and create a preliminary piece of writing –a virtual proposal. This practicum will also provide you with an experience in evaluating the research designs, methodological stances, and sources of evidence employed in your classmates’ works.
I. Course Expectations:
1. Caucus and Class Participation: This is YOUR discussion course. I will generally leave it to you to devise the best way of conducting fruitful discussions. A typical class will be in the form of a student-led discussion. Participants will enjoy at least THREE chances to lead a discussion. Therefore, attendance to and active participation in class is always assumed and counted as essential parts of your participation grade. I will assume that all the participants will have read the assigned readings, given a critical thought, and be ready to engage in class discussions. Please note that the History 298 caucus site is created primarily for pre-class brainstorming sessions. Each student is expected to complete ALL the reading assignments, frame ONE study question, and post it on the caucus before 8:00 am on the day of each class session. Before coming to class, each student should have read most of the postings of other students and be prepared to carry on the discussion from there. Remember that the quality of discussion depends on the quality of your study questions. Therefore, be sure to frame a question you think best engages the issues raised by the assigned readings for each session.
2.EightTwo-Page Reaction Papers:
The History 298 caucus will also be used for students to upload EIGHT reaction papers (maximum two pages & typewritten). These are not summaries, but critiques; reasoned argument about the weekly topic and/or approaches. Explain succinctly why you think there are certain advantages and drawbacks in a given approach. The students are also required to submit a hard copy of their papers to the instructor’s mailbox in History Department on the dates given below.
3. “Status of the major” paper – a four to five page essay in which you briefly outline a possible topic for your comps and identify the possible range of sources, state of the field, methods and approaches, and issues you have studied and will be studying during your career as a history major. One idea is to choose exemplary comps in your major field, and design a possible comps topic of your own. Be sure to include at least one region or culture which is not your home ground in your discussion of the state of the field in which you will examine the characteristics of the same historical approach used in several different countries and time periods.This paper is due by June 9 (M).
II. Evaluation:
Caucus and Class Participation: 40 %
Reaction Papers: 8 X 5=40 %
Status of the Major Paper: 20%
III. Readings:
1. Textbooks to be purchased at the bookstore (Copies are also available on closed reserve at the library):
Dorothy Thompson, ed., The Essential E.P. Thompson (New York: The New Press, 2001).
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995).
Laurel Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard (New York: Random House, 1990).
Philip Kuhn, Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990).
Luise White, Speaking With Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (Berkeley: UCP, 2000).
Steve Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London, 1988 (Durham: Duke UP, 2004).
Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2005).
2. E-Reserve:Reading marked with an asterisk (*) are available on-line, which is on electronic reserve on the library web.Readings with a sharp mark (#) can be found on other web-sites as indicated below.
3.Important Journals
The American Historical Review
History and Theory
Comparative Studies in Society and History
Historical Methods
Past and Present
Clio
The Journal of Modern History
The Journal of Contemporary History
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Journal of World History
Journal of Negro History
Journal of Asian Studies
Gender and History
History and Memory
Schedule of Class Meetings and Assignments:
Week One – What is History?
March 31 (M) Introductions
April 2 (W) History as Science
* Edward Hallet Carr, “The Historian and His Facts,” in his What is History?,3-35.
# James T. Kloppenberg, “Objectivity and Historicism: A Century of American Historical
Writing,” American Historical Review 94.4 (1989): 1011-1030. [JSTOR]
April 4 (F) Historians and Public History
* Carol Gluck, “Operations of Memory: “Comfort Women” and the World,” in Sheila Jager
et al., eds., Ruptured Histories: War, Memory, and the Post-Cold War in Asia (Cambridge:
Harvard UP, 2007), 47-77.
* Lisa Yoneyama, “For Transformative Kowledge and Postnationalist Public Spheres: The
Smithsonian Enola Gay Controversy,” in Perilous Memories (Durham: Duke UP, 2002),
323-346.
Week 2 – Marxist Approaches to History
April 7 (M) History as Progress
Thompson, “Historical Logic” (445-59) & “Marxism and History” (460-78).
# Karl Marx, “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof” Communist Manifesto,
Chapter One (
# Karl Marx, “Part I,” in The German Ideology (
April 9 (W) Class Consciousness
Thompson, “Class Consciousness” (73-184).
* Eric Hobsbawm, “Class Consciousness in History,” in Aspects of History and Class
Consciousness, ed. István Mészaros (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972), 5-21.
April 11 (F) Labor History
Thompson, “The Weavers” (30-72) & “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century” (316-77).
Reaction Paper One on Marxist History is due by 4:30 pm on April 11 on Caucus and at the instructor’s mailbox (F).
Week 3 – History from the Bottom Up
April 14 (M) The New Social History – the AnnalesSchool
* Fernand Braudel, “History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Duree,” in his On History,
trans. by Sarah Matthews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 25-54.
* Carl Weiner, “The Annales School” (unpublished manuscript).
# Lynn Hunt, “French History in the Last Twenty Years,” Journal of Contemporary History
21 (1986): 209-24. [JSTOR]
April 16 (W) The History of Mentalités I
Philip Kuhn, “Tales of the China Clipper” (1-29) “Threats Seen and Unseen” (49-72) “The Roots of Sorcery Fear” (94-118).
April 18 (F) The History of Mentalités II
Philip Kuhn, “On the Trail of the Master-Sorcerers” (149-162) & “Political Crime and Bureaucratic Monarchy” (187-222).
Reaction Paper Two on the History of Mentalités is due by 4:30 pm on April 18 (F).
Week 4 – The New Cultural History – Post-Structuralist Approach
April 21 (M) Disciplinary Experience
Michelle Foucault, 3-103.
April 23 (W) Epistemes and Paradigms
Michelle Foucault, 104-194.
April 25 (F) The Representation of Space
Michelle Foucault, 195-308.
Reaction Paper Three on the new cultural history is due by 4:30 pm on April 25 (F).
Week 5 –The Politics of Historical Writing
April 28 (M) Gender as a Category of History
# Joan Wallach Scott, “Gender as a Category of History,” in Gender and the Politics of History
(New York: Columbia UP, 1999), 28-50. [JSTOR]
# Bonnie Smith, “Gender and the Practices of Scientific History: The Seminar and Archival
Research in the 19th Century,” American Historical Review 100 (1995): 1150-76.
[JSTOR]
April 30 (W) Race as a Category of History
# Thomas C. Holt, “Making: Race, Race-Making and the Writing of History,” American
Historical Review 100.1 (1995): 1-20. [JSTOR]
# Frederick Cooper, “Race, Ideology and the Perils of Comparative History,” American
Historical Review 101 (Oct. 1996): 1122-1138. [JSTOR]
May 2 (F) Contesting the National History
Peter Perdue, “Introduction” (1-11) & “Writing the National History of Conquest” (497-517).
Reaction Paper Four on the Politics of Writing History is due by 4:30 pm on May 2 (F).
Week 6 – Environmental History
May 5 (M) no class – midterm break (Cinco de Mayo in Mexico)
May 7 (W) Environment and Social Change
Peter Perdue, “Environments, StateBuilding, and National Identity” (15-50) & “StateBuilding in Europe and Asia” (514-46) & “Frontier Expansion in the Rise and Fall of the Qing” (547-65)
May 8 (Th) Lefler Lecture at 5:00 p.m. in Leighton 304 by Professor Peter Purdue of Yale
May 9 (F)Travelogues, Time and Space (or Prof. Purdue’s chosen topic)
Peter Perdue, “Moving through the Land” (409-461) & “Marking Time: Writing Imperial History (462-94).
Reaction Paper Five on Environmental History is due by 4:30 pm on May 9 (F).
Week 7 – Microhistory
May 12 (M)Rhythms in Everyday Life
Laurel Ulrich, 3-133.
Film: A Midwife’s Tale, PBS (90 min.)
May 14 (W) Textiles and Sexuality
Laurel Ulrich, 134-285
May 16 (F) Diary as a Historical Source
Laurel Ulrich, 286-352.
# Jill Lepore, “Historians Who Love Too Much: Reflections on Microhistory and
Biography,” Journal of American History 88 (2001): 129-144. [JSTOR]
Reaction Paper Six on Microhistory is due by 4:30 pm on May 16 (F).
Week 8 – Oral History
May 19 (M) Rumor and Gossip as Historical Sources
Luise White, “Blood and Word” (3-55) & “Historicizing Rumor and Gossip” (56-88).
May 21 (W) Colonialism and Vampire Stories
Luise White, “Bandages on Your Mouth” (89-121) & “Why is Petrol Red?” (122-150).
May 23 (F) Historical Truth and Memory
Luise White, “A Special Danger” (151-305).
Reaction Paper Seven on Oral History is due by 4:30 pm on May 23 (F).
Week 9– Memory and History
May 26 (M) Crafting a Memory Box
Steve Stern, “Introduction” (xix-6), “Heroic Memory” (7-38), & “Dissident Memory” (39-87).
May 28 (W) The Regime of Silence
Steve Stern, “Indifferent Memory” (88-103) & “From Loose Memory to Emblematic Memory” (104-154).
May 30 (F) Listening to and Representing Oral Sources
Steve Stern, 215-235.
* Pierre Nora, “General Introduction,” in her Realms of Memory (New York: Columbia UP, 1997).
# Jeremy Popkin, “Holocaust Memories, Historians’ Memoirs: First-Person Narrative and the
Memory of the Holocaust,” History and Memory 15.1 (2003): 49-84. [PROQUEST]
Reaction Paper Eight on Memory is due by 4:30 pm on May 30 (F).
Week 10 –Building a Major
June 2(M) Student Presentations& Critiques – Group I: Last names A-L
June 4 (W) Student Presentations& Critiques – Group II: Last names M-Z
“Status of the major” paper is due by June 9 (M).
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