HS 357: Historiography
Wednesday 4:15-6:45
Professor Paul Hanson
e-mail: phanson@butler.edu
Irwin Library 007
JH 380
Office phone: 940-9679
Home phone: 283-4546
Office hours: MW 1:00-3:00, T 10:00-12:00, or by appointment
The following books are required for this course and should be available in the
Campus bookstore:
Cannadine, David, ed., What is History Now?
Chartier, Roger, ed., On the Edge of the Cliff: History, Language, and Practices
Eley, Geoff and Keith Nield, eds., The Future of Class in History
Hunt, Lynn, Measuring Time, Making History
Jenkins, Keith, Re-Thinking History
We will be supplementing these readings with an array of articles, which I will
make available to you in the weeks ahead via Blackboard. Many are listed below,
while some remain to be selected.
Syllabus
Week 1: August 26: Introduction: What is History?
Reading: “Theory, History and Social Science,” from William H.
Sewell, Logics of History: Social Theory and Social
Transformation, pp. 1-21.
Week 2: September 2: Discussion of Jenkins, Re-Thinking History
Week 3: September 9: Discussion of Hunt, Measuring Time, Making History
First Paper Due
Week 4: September 16: Anthropology and History
Reading: “History and Anthropology,” from E.P. Thompson,
Making History: Writings on History and Culture,
pp. 200-225.
“History, Synchrony, and Culture: Reflections on the
Work of Clifford Geertz,” and “A Theory of the Event:
Marshall Sahlins’s ‘Possible theory of History,’” from
W.H. Sewell, Logics of History, pp. 175-224.
Week 5: September 23: Discussion of Chartier, On the Edge of the Cliff, pp. 1-80.
Week 6: September 30: Discussion of Chartier, pp. 81-164.
Second Paper Due
Week 7: October 7: Gender, Women’s History, Feminist History
Reading: Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical
Analysis,” from Gender and the Politics of History, pp. 28-52
Amanda Vickery, “A Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A
Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women’s
History,” The Historical Journal 36, 2 (1993), 383-414
“Feminist History and Women’s History,” from Judith
Bennett, History Matters, Chapter 2.
Karen Offen, “History of Women,” from the Oxford
Encyclopedia of Women in World History, v. 2
Week 8: October 14: The Annales school of French history
Reading: articles/selections to be announced
Week 9: October 21: Marxist Historiography
Reading: “What do Historians Owe to Karl Marx,” and “Marx and
History,” from Eric Hobsbawm, On History, pp. 141-170.
“Agenda for Radical History,” from E.P. Thompson,
Making History: Writings on History and Culture, pp. 358-364
Eley and Nield, The Future of Class in History, pp. 1-56.
Book review Paper Due
Week 10: October 28: Class in History
Reading: Eley and Nield, pp. 57-201.
Week 11: November 4: Postcolonialism and Eurocentrism
Reading: Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of
History: Who Speaks for ‘Indian’Pasts?,” Representations
No. 37 (Winter 1992), 1-26.
Arlif Dirlik, “Is there History after Eurocentrism?:
Globalism, Postcolonialism, and the Disavowal of History,”
Cultural Critique No. 42 (Spring 1999), 1-34.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
in Gary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, eds., Marxism
and the Interpretation of Culture, pp. 271-313.
Prasenjit Duara, “The Regime of Authenticity:
Timelessness, Gender, and National History in Modern
China,” History and Theory Vol. 37, No. 3 (October 1998),
pp. 287-308.
Week 12: November 11: Film and History
Reading: Not much! We will watch a film and talk about it.
Week 13: November 18: What is History Now?
Reading: David Cannadine, ed., What is History Now?
Fourth Paper Due
Week 14: December 2: Project Reports
Week 15: December 9: Project Reports, with food of various sorts
Final Papers Due December 16.