SEQUENCE OF CLASSES:
1. August 21: Introduction to the Course
2. August 28: the New History and the Old, or, the French Historical
Revolution
Reading:
Peter Burke, The French Historical Revolution (Stanford U.P. 1990).
[ISBN0804718377] Entire
-Try to order this from Amazon.com or from a local bookstore [D16 .B94
1990]
G.R. Elton, "King or Minister? The Man Behind the Henrician Revolution,"
History
39 (1954), 216-232.
Jacques Le Goff, "Merchant's Time and Church's Time in the Middle Ages,"
in Le Goff, Time, Work and
Culture in the Middle Ages, translated Arthur Goldhammer (University
of Chicago Press, 1980), 29-42
Jacques Le Goff, "Ecclesiastical Culture and Folklore in the Middle Ages:
Saint Marcellus of Paris and
the Dragon," in ibid., 159-188.
Required Assignment:
Analytical essay: "What does the Annales paradigm have to offer the historical
profession?"
September 4: HOLIDAY (LABOR DAY)
3. September 11: Expanding the Discipline
Readings:
Robert Darnton, "History and Anthropology," in Darnton, The Kiss of
Lamourette: Reflections in
Cultural History (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1990), 329-353,
382-384.
Joan Scott, "Women's History," in P. Burke, ed., New Perspectives
on Historical Writing (University Park,
PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), 42-66.
Lynn Hunt, "Introduction: History, Culture and Text," in The New Cultural
History, ed. Lynn Hunt
(Berkeley, 1989), 1-22. [HN13 .N48 1989]
Gertrude Himmelfarb, "Some Reflections on the New History" and Joan Wallach
Scott, "History in Crisis?
The Others' Side of the Story," in American Historical Review 94
(1989): 661-670, 680-692.
[E171 .A57]
Required Assignment:
Analytical essay: "In the aftermath of the fragmentation of the discipline
of history, what does it mean
‘to do history'?"
4. September 18: The Fall of Rome?
Readings:
Arthur Ferrill, The Fall of the Roman Empire (Thames and Hudson,
1986) [DG312 .F47 1986]
-skim it all (it's short), but be sure to read the preface, and chapters
1-2.
Richard Hodges and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins
of Europe:
Archaeology and the Pirenne Thesis (Cornell, 1983) [D121 .H63 1983]
Possible Assignments:
Book review of Hodges and Whitehouse
5. September 25: Feudal Society and its Interpretors
Readings:
Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, 2 vols., trans. L.A. Manyon (Chicago,
1961), especially chaps. 4-6, 9-10,
11-12, 16-17, 27, 30, 32-33 [D131 .B513 1961]
Sir Frank Stenton, The First Century of English Feudalism, 1066-1166,
2nd edition (Oxford,
1961), Introductory, Chapters 1 (pp. 7-41) and 5 (152-191)
Georges Duby, "Youth in Aristocratic Society: Northwestern France in the
Twelfth Century," in
Duby, The Chivalrous Society, trans. Cynthia Postan (Chicago, 1977),
112-122. [HN11 .D78 1977b]
Possible Assignments:
Analytical essay: "Which is a more persuasive historical framework, the
concept of ‘feudalism' or the concept
of ‘feudal society'? Why?"
Book review of Bloch
6. October 2: Peasant Life
Readings:
E. Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: the Promised Land of Error (Vintage Books,1979)
[DC801.M753 L4713]
Leonard Boyle, "Montaillou Revisited: Mentalités and Structures,"
in Pathways to Medieval Peasants,
ed. J. A. Raftis (Toronto, 1981), 119-140. [HD1523 .P37 1981]
Required Assignments
Book review of Ladurie
October 9: HOLIDAY
7. October 16: Women and Gender in the Middle Ages
Readings:
C.W. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: the Religious Significance of
Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley,
1987) [BR253 .B96 1987]
Rudolph Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago, 1985) [BX4656 .B45 1985]
Possible Assignments:
Book review of Bynum
Book review of Bell
8. October 23: The Renaissance as a Conceptual Problem
Readings:
Jacob Burkhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 2
vols. (Harper and Row, 1958),
Chapters 1-3 (pp. 21-44), Chapters 6-7 (75-106), Part II, Chapters 1-3
(143-162);
Part III, Chapter 1 (175-182) Chapters 3-6 (196-235), Part V, Chapters
1-5 (pp. 353-395)
Charles Nauert, Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe (Cambridge
UP, 1995), entire
Richard Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Cornell U.P.
1980), 1-8, 213-278
Possible Assignments:
Book review of Nauert
9. October 30: Renaissance Biography: Elizabeth I
Readings:
Susan Bassnet, Elizabeth I: a Feminist Perspective (Oxford: Berg,
1988) [DA355 .B37 1988]
Carole Levin, The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics
of Sex and Power
(U. Pennsylvania Press, 1994) entire
FILM: Elizabeth?
Possible Assignments:
Analytical essay: "How does (or should) the concept of gender affect the
writing of biography?"
Book review of Levin
Book review of Bassnet
10. November 6: Interpreting the German Reformation
Readings:
R.W. Scribner, "The Incombustible Luther: the Image of the Reformer in
Early Modern Germany,"
Past and Present 110 (1986), 38-68.
Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Harper, 1978)
pp. 207-243 [CB203 .B87 1978c]
Steven E. Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities : the Appeal of Protestantism
to Sixteenth-Century
Germany and Switzerland (New Haven, 1975) [BR305.2 .O9]
Possible Assignments
Book review of Ozment
11. November 13: The French Wars of Religion
Readings:
Barbara Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century
Paris (Oxford, 1991)
[DC719 .D54 1991]
Moshe Sluhovsky, "History as Voyeurism: From Marguerite de Valois to La
Reine Margot," forthcoming in
Rethinking History 3 (1999)
Film: La Reine Margot
Possible Assignments:
Book review of Diefendorf
12. November 20: Absolutism and the State
Readings:
William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France:
State Power and Provincial
Aristocracy in Languedoc (Cambridge, 1985), chaps. 1, 5, 8, 10-13,
conclusion
Nicholas Henshall, The Myth of Absolutism: Change and Continuity in
Early Modern European Monarchy
(Longman, 1992), pp. viii-ix, 1-60, 80-100, 148-213
Possible Assignments:
Book review of Beik
Book review of Henshall
Analytical essay: "Should we abandon the term absolutism?"
13. November 27: Popular Culture in the 18th Century
Readings:
E.P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the 18th Century,"
and "The Moral Economy
Reviewed," in Customs in Common (New York, 1991): 185-258, 259-351
[HN398.E5 T48 1992]
Natalie Z. Davis, "The Rites of Violence," in Society and Culture in
Early Modern France: Eight
Essays (Stanford, 1975), 152-187 [DC33 .D33]
Suzanne Desan, "Crowds, Community and Ritual in the Work of E.P. Thompson
and Natalie Davis,"
in The New Cultural History, ed. Lynn Hunt, 47-71.
Possible Assignments
Analytical essay: "Is there a necessary connection between crowds and violence?"
14. December 4: Culture and Literacy in 18th Century France
Readings:
Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French
Cultural History
(New York, 1984), 1-104 (chaps. 1-2) [DC33.4 .D37 1985]
Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, trans.
Lydia Cochrane (Durham, 1991),
chaps. 1, 3, 4, 7, 8 [DC138 .C48 1991]
Possible Assignments
Book review: Darnton
Book review: Chartier
15. December 11: You Say You Want A Revolution?
Readings:
Eric Hobsbawm, "The Making of Bourgeois Revolution," in Ferenc Fehér,
ed., The French Revolution
and the Birth of Modernity (Berkely, 1990), 30-48.
Patrice Higonnet, "Cultural Upheaval and Class Formation During the French
Revolution," in Fehér, ed.,
The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity (Berkely, 1990),
69-102.
François Furet, "Transformations in the Historiography of the French
Revolution," in Fehér, ed.,
The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity (Berkely, 1990),
264-277 [DC148 .F722 1990]
Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley,
1992), 1-123, 193-204
[DC148 .H86 1992]
Possible Assignments:
Book review of Hunt
Analytical essay: "A wit has said that there are as many French Revolutions
as there are Frenchmen. How do the
week's readings support or contradict this quip?"
December 18: HISTORIOGRAPHY ESSAYS DUE BY NOON