History 496
 
The Philosophy of History
Links to readings and other class materials require your ISU ULID and  password.
Link to the Webboard, click here: http://webboard.ilstu.edu/~history496f05
Link to the Calendar: Philosophy of History
Description
 
This course provides a foundation for historical research by introducing various schools of historical philosophy.  The materials are presented intentionally without regard to chronology to avoid establishing certain methods as normative and later ones as reactionary.  While it is true that the theorists of history are in constant dialogue with both earlier and contemporary historians and theorists, it is useful to pursue each methodology on its own merits.  We begin, then, with some of the more recent historians, particularly Foucault, whose radical break with structuralism shaped much of post-modern theory in several fields, including history. We will then pursue cultural anthropology, literary criticism, empirical history, the material history of Marx, gender theory, race and postcolonial theory, and finally contemporary reactions to postmodern thought: the revival of narrative and history as science. For each school of thought we will read both the theorists who best represent the field and with an example of how that theory is used to write history. Several of the readings and all the films are assigned to spur thinking about how conceptions of time, memory, and truth inform our ideas about the past. There will be a twenty-page research paper to allow students to pursue individual interests in depth and a symposium at the end of the term in which students will present their research to their peers in an academic setting.  The aim of all assignments in this class is to develop and strengthen writing, research, presentation and critical thinking skills. Classes will be dialogue and debate; come ready to talk.
 
Requirements:
 
•    Read all materials assigned for class; bring those materials with you to class; and be prepared to talk about them.
•    For three classes write a 250-word position paper to post on the class discussion web board . These must be posted by midnight on the three days before the scheduled class.
  1. •    One 250 word position paper to a lecture or event that relates in any way to culture and history. I will announce these throughout the semester, but please let me know of any events I’ve missed so that I can put them on the board.
  2. •    Participate actively in every class and on the web board (post at least one comment a week).    
  3. •    Write a twenty-page research paper that incorporates clear historiographic elements, based on your own research and thinking.
•    Deliver a fifteen-minute oral presentation in a symposium at the end of the term.
•    Regularly read The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, or any other international paper. Those who read other languages are encouraged to choose a paper from another country or culture to bring that perspective to the class. All are available online without cost. I will ask each person to choose a paper to make sure that we have wide coverage.
 
Grade:
 
30% Class participation (including responses posted on web board).
30% Four 250-word position papers to be posted on web board.
30% Research Paper
10% Oral Presentation
 
Books:
 
Foucault, Michel. The Use of Pleasure. The History of Sexuality:Vol. 2. New York: Random House, 1978.  ISBN: 978-0679724698 (Amazon: $9.56)
 
Green, Anna and Kathleen Troup. The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-Century History and Theory. New York: New York University Press, 1999. ISBN: 978-0719052552 (Amazon: $19.80).
 
Kundera, Milan. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Perenial Classics (HarperCollins), 1999. ISBN: # 978-0060932145. (Amazon: $11.56).
 
Said, Edward. Orientalism. Vintage, 1979. ISBN: 978-0394740676.
 
Photocopy Packet available at Pro-type Printing, 203 North St. Normal, Illinois 61761.  309 452-4409 (http://www.protypeonline.com).  This will not be available until after the first week of classes.
 
Suggested:
 
If you have not had an historical methods class (such as HIS 200), you might consider reading Iggers, Georg G. Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 2005 (2nd edition). ISBN: 978-0819567666 (Amazon: $18.00).
 
Films:
 
Charlie Kaufman. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. 2004. Jim Carrey. [Milner: Video DVD 0944]
 
Milan Kundera. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. 1988. Daniel Day-Lewis.
 
David McKenna. American History X. 1998. Edward Norton.
 
Bruce Joel Rubin. Jacob’s Ladder. 1990. Tim Robbins.
 
John Sales. The Brother from Another Planet. 1984. Joe Morton.
 
Readings:
 
Because of its length, you should begin reading  selections from Edward Said’s Orientalism at the beginning of term. We will be discussing his work (and that of his critics) in the current context of conflict in the Middle East.
 
Week 1: The Historical Constructions of History
Readings: Erich Auerbach, “Odysseus’ Scar,” in Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature 3-23, Homer’s Odyssey, Book 19, and Genesis, 22.
 
Week 2: Rhetoric and Narrative, Postmodernism and Poststructuralis
Readings: Foucault, The Use of Pleasure. The History of Sexuality Vol. 2, Introduction, Parts 1 and 2. Green and Troup, “The Challenge of Poststructuralism/Postmodernism,” The Houses of History, pp. 297-307. Walkowitz, “Science and the Séance: Transgressions of Gender and Genre,” in Green and Troup, pp. 308-325.
 
Week 3: Rhetoric and Narrative, Postmodernism and Poststructuralism
Readings: Michel Foucault, “Introduction,” in The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York, 1972, 3-17 (photocopy packet). Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, Parts 2, 4 and 5 and Conclusion.  
 
Week 4: Memory and History
Readings: Milan Kundera The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Nietzche, On the Use and Abuse of History. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire (Paris, 1984), in Histories: French Constructions of the Past, Ed. Revel and Hunt, pp. 631-643. Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory since 1944 in Histories: French Constructions of the Past, Ed. Revel and Hunt, pp. 644-649 (photocopy packet). Film: Charlie Kaufman. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. 2004. Green and Troup, “Oral History” (230-238) and Alistair Thompson, “Anzac Memories: Putting Popular Memory Theory into Practice in Australia,” in Green and Troup, (239-252).
 
Week 5: Cultural Anthropology and History
Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward and Interpretive Theory of Culture,” and “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight, in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York, 1973), pp. 3-30; 412-453 (photocopy packet). Green and Troup, Anthropology and Ethnohistorians,” in The Houses of History, pp. 172-182, Inga Clendinnen, “Yucatec Maya Women and the Spanish Conquest: Role and Ritual in Historical Reconstruction,” in Green and Troup, pp. 183-203. Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Scientific Criteria in the Social and Human Disciplines,” in Histories: French Constructions of the Past, Ed. Revel and Hunt, pp. 191-194 (photocopy packet). Natalie Z. Davis, “The Possibilities of the Past: Anthropology and History in the 1980s” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 12/1 (Autumn, 1981): 267-275 on JSTOR (http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-1953%28198123%2912%3A2%3C267%3ATPOTP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2). Optional Films: Jeremy Irons, Robert DiNero, The Mission. Romero: The story of the life and conversion of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. Music: Randy Newman, “Great Nations of Europe.” Topics Due for Research Paper.
 
Week 6: Literature and History
Readings: Brian Stock, “Literary Discourse and the Social Historian,” in Listening for the Text: On the Uses of the Past (Baltimore, 1990) 75-94 (photocopy packet). Green and Troup, “The Question of Narrative,” The Houses of History, pp. 204-213.  Hayden White, “The Fictions of Factual Representation,” in Green and Troup, pp. 214-229. Nancy Partner, “Making Up Lost Time: Writing on the Writing of History” Speculum 61/1 (Jan. 1986): 90-117 on JSTOR (http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0038-7134%28198601%2961%3A1%3C90%3AMULTWO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-N)
 
Week 7: Orientalism
Reading: Edward Said, Orientalism (Chapters 1:I-II, Chapter 2:I, IV, Chapter 3:I-IV). Recommended: Georg Igger, “History and the Challenge of Postmodernism,” in Historiography in the Twentieth Century, 97-160. Bernard Lewis, “The Question of Orientalism,” The New York Review of Books 29/11 (June 24, 1982) and Edward Said, Oleg Grabar and Reply by Bernard Lewis, “Orientalism: An Exchange,” The New York Review of Books 29/13 (August 12, 1982) (photocopy packet).
 
Week 8: History as Science
Readings: Green and Troup, “The Empirists,” (p. 1-11) and G. R. Elton, England Under the Tudors (excerpts), Green and Troup, p. 12-32. Fritz Stern, “The Ideal of Universal History: Ranke,” in The Varieties of History, 54-62 (photocopy packet). Fritz Stern, “Historical Conceptualization: Huizinga,” in The Varieties of History, (289-303) (photocopy packet).Green and Troup, “Freud and Psychohistory,” in The Houses of History” 59-70 and Eric Ericson, “The Legend of Hitler’s Childhood,” in Green and Troup, 71-86. Recommended: Georg Iggers, “The Early Phase: The Emergence of History as a Professional Discipline,” 23-47. Annotated Bibliography Due.
 
Week 9: Hegel for Fun and Profit: The Dialectic and the Spirit of History
Reading: Reading: Thucydides, Selections from The Peloponnesian War (on my website), Hegel, The Philosophy of History (sections 1-14 (original history, reflective history, and philosophic history) and sections 60-64; 72; 81; 83; 95-99 (world history). http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/index.htm.
 
Week 10: Marx and Marxism
Readings: Stern, “Historical Materialism: Marx and Engels; Jaurès,” in The Varieties of History, (145-158) (photocopy packet). Frederick Engels. The Principles of Communism (1847), http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm. Karl Marx
Wage Labour and Capital (1891). “What are Wages?” Wage Labor and Capital (1847) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ch02.htm. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon
(1852), Chapter One http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm and Chapter Seven http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch07.htm. If you haven’t read the Communist Manifesto, please read at least the first chapter, “Bourgeois and Proletarians,” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm.
 
Week 11: Marx and Marxism
Reading: Green and Troup, “Marxist Historians,” in The Houses of History, pp. 33-43. E. P. Thompson, “Exploitation,” in Green and Troup, pp. 44-58. Louis Althusser, “On Marxism,” from Early Writings, The Specter of Hegel (1953). http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/works/onmarx/althusse.htm and “Reply to John Lewis,” in Histories: French Constructions of the Past, Ed. Revel and Hunt, pp. 195-201 (in photocopy packet after Levi-Strauss (see above)). Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge: A Realist View of Logic, Physics, and History (1966). http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/at/popper.htm. Film: Milan Kundera. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. 1988.
 
Week 12: Gender and History
Bynum, “’... And Woman His Humanity’: Gender Imagery in the Religious Writing of The Later Middle Ages,” in Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols, ed. Caroline Bynum, Stevan Harrell and Paula Richman (1986). (photocopy packet). Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949), “Introduction: Woman as Other,” http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/debeauv.htm. Green and Troup, “Gender and History,” (253-262) and Catherine Hall, “Gender Divisions and Class Formation in the Birmingham Middle Class, 1780-1850,” in Green and Troup (263-276). Review Walkowitz, “Science and the Séance: Transgressions of Gender and Genre,” in Green and Troup, pp. 308-325.
 Rough Draft Due.
 
Week 13: Race and Postcolonial History
Readings: Kelley, Robin D. G. “Introduction,” in Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston, 1987) (1-13) (photocopy packet).
 Kelley, “Kickin’ Reality, Kickin’ Ballistics: ‘Gangsta Rap’ and Postindustrial Los Angeles,” in Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class (New York, 1994) (183-227) (photocopy packet). Film: John Sales. The Brother from Another Planet. 1984 and David McKenna. American History X. 1998. Green and Troup, “Postcolonial Perspectives,” in The Houses of History 277-287 and Henrietta Whiteman, “White Buffalo Woman,” in Green and Troup, 288-296. Michael Geyer and Charles Bright, “World History in a Global Age” The American Historical Review 100/4 (Oct., 1995): 1034-1060. In JSTOR: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762%28199510%29100%3A4%3C1034%3AWHIAGA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3.
 
Week 14: Truth and Objectivity
Readings: Peter Novick, “Introduction: Nailing Jelly to the Wall,” in That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Association (Cambridge, 1988) 1-17 (photocopy packet). Alan B. Spitzer, “Historical Argument when the Political Chips are Down,” “Ronald Reagan’s Bitburg Narrative,” and “Conclusion,” in Historical Truth and Lies about the Past: Reflections on Dewey, Dreyfus, de Man, and Reagan (Chapel Hill, 1996) 1-12, 97-115, 117-121 (photocopy packet). Recommended: Georg Igger, “The Middle Phase: The Challenge of the Social Sciences,” in Historiography in the Twentieth Century, 51-94. Film: Bruce Joel Rubin. Jacob’s Ladder. 1990.  Conference preliminary reading (5 min. each).
 
Week 15: Thanksgiving Break
Work on research papers.
 
Week 16: Conference: Truth, Memory, and Time. Thursday December 3rd, 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Room TBA.
Research Papers Due.