Jacques Revel
Cultural History in Questions
Trends and Debates (1950-2012)
Spring 2012
The seminar is devoted to some crucial points of the debate in cultural history since the mid20th century. It offers a substantial amount of optional, interdisciplinary readings which will
be presented and discussed in class. Students are not expected to read all of them, but to select
a number of close readings. The course intends to provide a solid and basic critical basis for
students interested in the cultural aspects of social life.
Requirements: all enrolled students are expected to give a brief presentation on one or more of
the readings in class, and write a 15-20 p. final essay on a topic to be worked out together
with the instructor. The class will meet twice a week during the second half of the Spring
term.
General readings
Peter Burke, What is Cultural History?, Cambridge UK, Polity Press, 2004.
Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1989.
George Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century. From Scientific Objectivity to the
Postmodern Challenge, Hanover-London, Wesleyan University Press, 1997.
Jacques Revel, Lynn Hunt, eds, Histories. French Constructions of the Past, New York, The
New Press, 1996.
1. Presentation : Culture and cultures.
Ernst Gombrich, “In Search of Cultural History”, in Ideals and Idols. Essays on Values in
History and in Art, Oxford, 1979, p. 25-59.
2. The autonomy of intellectual history
Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas”, History and Theory,
8, 1969, p. 3-53.
Robert Darnton, “Intellectual and Cultural History”, in Michael Kammen, ed., The Past
Before Us. Contemporary Historical Writing in the United States, Ithaca, NY, Cornell
University Press, 1980.
Anthony Grafton, “The History of Ideas : Precepts and Practice, 1950-2000 and Beyond”,
Journal of the History of Ideas, 76, 1, 2006, p. 1-32.
Suggested reading :
Donald R. Kelley, The Descent of Ideas. The History of Intellectual History, Ashgate,
Aldershot, 2002.
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3. Mentalités and beyond
Marc Bloch, Feudal Society (1939), London, 1961, Book II, chap. 2 (“Feeling and
Thinking”).
Roger Chartier, “Intellectual History or Sociocultural history? The French Trajectories”, in
Dominick LaCapra and Steven Kaplan, eds, Modern European Intellectual History:
Reappraisals and New perspectives, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1982, p. 13-46.
Jacques Le Goff, “Mentalities” in J. Le Goff and P. Nora, eds, Constructing the Past,
Cambridge, 1985.
Jacques Revel, Lynn Hunt, Histories. French Constructions of the Past..., p. 31-33, 371-422.
Suggested reading :
Jacques Le Goff, Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages, Chicago, Chicago University
Press, 1980.
4. The trading zone: history and anthropology
Edward P. Thompson, « The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth
Century », Past and Present, 50, 1971, p. 76-136.
Edward P. Thompson, “Folklore, Anthropology and Social History”, The Indian Historical
Review, January 1977.
Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Rites of Violence”, in Society and Culture in Early Modern
France, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1975, p. 152-188.
Suggested reading :
Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France, Stanford, Stanford
University Press, 1975.
5. Anthropology and history
Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description. Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture”, in The
Interpretation of Cultures, New York, Basic Books, 1973, p. 3-30.
A debate :
Robert Darnton, “Workers Revolt : The Great Cat Massacre”, in The Great Cat Massacre
and Other Episodes in French Cultural History, New York, Basic Books, 1984, p. 75-104.
Forum : Roger Chartier, “Texts, Symbols, Frenchness”, Journal of Modern History, 57, 1985,
p. 682-695 ; Robert Darnton, “The Symbolic Element in History”, JMH, 58, 1986, p. 218234; Dominick LaCapra, “Chartier, Darnton, and the Great Symbol Massacre”, JMH, 60,
1988,
p. 95-112 ; James Fernandez, “Historians Tell Tales : of Cartesian Cats and Gallic
Cockfights”, JMH, 60, 1988, p. 113-127.
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6. Foucault: from archaelogy to genealogy
Michel Foucault: The Archeology of Knowledge, London, Pantheon, 1969, “Introduction”.
Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”, in D. Bouchard, ed., Language, Countermemory, Practice, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1977.
David C. Hog, Foucault: A Critical Reader, Oxford, 1986.
Patricia O’Brien, “Michel Foucault’s History of Culture”, in L. Hunt, ed., The New Cultural
History, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1989, p. 25-46.
7. Norbert Elias: culture as a social process
Norbert Elias, The Court Society (1933, 1969), Oxford, Blackwell, 1983, Foreword and
chapter 3.
Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, Oxford, Blackwell, 2000, vol. II, « Synopsis : Towards
a Theory of the Civilizing Process », p. 363-447.
8. History vs. Sociology
George Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century. From Objectivity to the Postmodern
Challenge, Hanover-London, Wesleyan University Press, 1997, p. 31-35, 65-77.
Pierre Bourdieu, “Intellectual Field and Creative Project”, (1966), Social Science Information,
8, 1969, p. 859-906.
Craig Calhoun, “The Rise and Domestication of Historical Sociology”, in Terrence J.
McDonald ed., The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences, Ann Arbor, The University of
Michigan Press, 1996, p. 305-337.
Suggested reading:
Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1990.
9. Culture in context. The varieties of microhistories
Giovanni Levi, « On Micro-history », in Peter Burke, ed., New Perspectives in Historical
Writing, Cambridge, UK, 1991, p. 97-119.
Carlo Ginzburg, “Clues. Roots of an Evidential Paradigm”, in Clues, Myths, and the
Historical Method, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989, p. 96-125.
Carlo Ginzburg, “Microhistory: Two or Three Things I Know About It”, Critical Inquiry, 20,
1993, p. 10-35.
Jacques Revel, “Micro-analyse et construction du social”, in J. Revel, ed., Jeux d’échelles. La
micro-analyse à l’expérience, Paris, Gallimard-Seuil, 1996, p. 15-36.
Simona Cerutti, « Microhistory : Social Relations vs Cultural Models », in A.-M. Castren, M.
Lonkila, M. Peltonen, eds., Between Sociology and History. Essays on Microhistory,
Collective Action, and Nation-Building, Helsinki, SKS/ Finnish Literature Society, 2004,
p. 17-40.
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Suggested readings:
Carlo Ginzburg: The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a 16th Century Miller, Baltimore,
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.
Or :
Giovanni Levi, Inheriting Power: the Story of an Exorcist, Chicago, Chicago University
Press, 1988.
10. Language as Context
Dominick LaCapra, “Rethinking Intellectual History and Reading Texts”, History and
Theory, 19, 3, 1980, p. 245-276.
Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in this Class ? The Authority of Interpretive Communities,
Cambridge, Mass.-London, Harvard University Press, “Introduction”, p. 1-17.
Frank Ankersmit, “Historiography and Postmodernism”, History and Theory, 28, 1989,
p. 127-153.
Joan W. Scott, “On Language, Gender, and Working Class History”, International Labor and
Working Class History, 31, 1987, p. 1-13.
Suggested reading:
Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation,
Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.
11. Questions about the linguistic turn
Two debates :
Forum : J. Toews, “Intellectual History After the Linguistic Turn : the Autonomy of Meaning
and the Irreducibility of Experience”, American Historical Review, 92, 4, 1987, p. 879-907 ;
David Harlan, “Intellectual History and the Return of Literature”, AHR, 94, 1989, p. 581-609 ;
David A. Hollinger, “The Return of the Prodigal : the Persistence of the Historical Knowing”,
AHR, 94, 1989, p. 610-621 ; Joyce Appleby, “One Good Turn Deserves Another : Moving
Beyond the Linguistic”, AHR, 94, 1989, p. 1326-1332.
Hayden White, “Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth”, in Saul Friedlander (ed),
Probing the Limits of Representation. Nazism and the “Final Solution”, Cambridge, Mass.London, Harvard University Press, 1992, p. 37-53 ; Carlo Ginzburg, “Just One Witness”,
Ibid., p. 82-96.
Matti Peltonen, “After the Linguistic Turn? Hayden White’s Tropology and History Theory in
the 1990’s”, in A. M. Castrén, M. Lonkila, M. Peltonen, eds, Between Sociology and
History..., p. 87-101.
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12. Representations :The New Cultural History
Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1989.
Terrence McDonald, “Introduction”, in T. McDonald, ed., The Historic Turn…, p. 1-14.
Roger Chartier, “The Powers and Limits of Representation”, in On the Edge of the Cliff.
History, Language and Practices, Baltimore-London, The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1997, p. 90-103.
Suggested reading :
Roger Chartier, Cultural History Between Practices and Representations, Cambridge, Polity
Press, 1988.
13. Memory
Eric J. Hobsbawm, “Inventing Tradition”, in E.J. Hobsbawm, T.Ranger, eds, The Invention of
Tradition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 11-14.
Pierre Nora, “Entre mémoire et histoire”, in Les Lieux de mémoire., La République, Paris,
Gallimard, 1984, p. XVII-XLII. (Realms of Memory, New York, Columbia University Press,
vol. 1, 1996, p. 1-20).
Jacques Revel, “Le fardeau de la mémoire. Histoire et mémoire en France dans la France
d’aujourd’hui”, French Politics, Culture and Society, 18, 2000, p. 1-12.
Suggested reading :
Maurice Halbwachs, The Collecitve Memory (1950), New York, Harper & Row, 1980, chap 1
(p. 22-49) ; chap. 3 (p. 88-127).
14.The Pragmatic Turn: Culture as Agency
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley, University of California Press,
1984 (Introduction, chap. III and XII).
Victoria Bonnell, Lynn Hunt, eds, Beyond the Cultural Turn, Berkeley, University of
California Press, 1999, p. 1-61.
William H. Sewell, « Refiguring the « Social » in the Social Sciences. An Interpretive
Manifesto », Logics of History. Social Theory and Social Transformation, Chicago, Chicago
University Press, 2005, p. 318-372.
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