COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course comprises the first half of the Graduate Colloquium in European History. Our task is a huge, even impossible one: we are tasked with trying to make sense of the methods, techniques, and approaches used by historians who study Europe from Rome to the French Revolution. Obviously we cannot do justice to every period and/or every topic, and our approach must inevitably be somewhat fragmentary. I have decided to organize the course in two ways, one topical and the other methodological. First, I have selected twelve issues, events, or concepts that, when taken together, will give students a useful overview of the span of European history from 300 to 1789. We move from the perennial question of the Fall of Rome, through the Middle Ages, to the Renaissance and Reformation, the Early Modern Period, and finally to the French Revolution. Second, I have attempted to select works of history within this topical framework that reflect the breadth and diversity of the historical method as practiced over the last fifty years; among the different methods we will encounter will be "traditional history," the Annales paradigm, cultural history, popular culture, and gender. My hope, then, is that this course will fulfill a two-pronged goal: it will introduce students to some of the crucial issues in pre-modern European history, and will also analyze the diversity of methods used by historians to approach that period.
Given these goals, it is important to remember that you will be asked in this course to evaluate, analyze, and criticize the arguments, methods, and structures of important works of history. Such a task requires that you read somewhat differently from the ways in which you might approach a research paper or a simple factual assignment. You must be concerned first and foremost with identifying the author's stated (or unstated) purpose and/or agenda in writing. Close behind this will fall the argument of the author's work. One of our tasks will be to evaluate the success of this argument, so it is worth getting used to the process of reading analytically; don't get bogged down in the minutiae of the details offered by each author, for we are really unconcerned with the specifics. Rather, pay close attention to the argument, the evidence offered to support that argument, and the assumptions around which the argument (and the choice of evidence) is based. In a word, you will be learning to "gut" or "fillet" a book; it sounds inelegant, and it is, but it is a very valuable skill. It involves reading rapidly (but carefully) a large number of pages, skimming the details but keeping your eyes open for the argument, holes in reasoning, blatant (or not-so-blatant) assumptions, and so on.