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History 5100
Theory, Historiography, Method:
Thinking Like A Historian
2012-2013
Course Instructor: Bryan D. Palmer
Office: Champlain C1
Office Hours: By appointment
Phone: 748-1011 x6061
Email: bpalmer@trentu.ca
Format: Weekly Meetings as outlined, 3 hours, seminar discussion
Course Description
The course offers MA students in the Department of History an opportunity to explore
ways of ‘thinking like a historian’. As such, it addresses how historians have understood
their project of writing about the past, exploring the ways in which the writing of history
has changed over time. The accent is on modern historiography to the extent that the
course addresses three ‘moments’ in 20th-century approaches to doing history.
A pre-1960s ‘conventional’ articulation of historical practice associated with Marc Bloch,
R.G. Collingwood, and E.H. Carr, among others, propounded, for all the possibility of
diverse perspectives, a relatively stable (compared to future developments) notion of
what the ‘idea of history’ entailed with respect to evidence and interpretation.
Conventional historical practice valued the political, the economic, and the intellectual, a
not surprising occurrence given the context of Revolution, Depression, War, Empire, and
the aesthetics of the avante-garde that had dominated the first half of the twentieth
century.
Out of the 1960s came new challenges of what might be called ‘engagement’, as
interpretation was infused with the meaning of particular approaches to the past
identifying more directly with specific subject areas and specific analytic (and
politicized) frameworks, Marxism and feminism being among the most influential. In this
era of engagement social history rose to prominence, but its singular rise masked a
plethora of particularities. Between the publication of The Making of the English
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Working Class (1963) and Natalie Zemon Davis’s The Return of Martin Guerre (1983)
or Mike Davis’s City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (1990) the
historiographic landscape had changed dramatically. One part of this was engaged
history’s prying open of new doors of analytic subject matter, what the Canadian
historian J.M.S. Careless called ‘limited identities’ in 1969, a process of exploration that
necessitated new research approaches and methods.
Another part of the change, however, was related to the shifting nature of
political/economic life in the reordering of global relations and material being that flowed
from the collapse of the post-World War II consensus (with its Cold War balkanization of
spheres of interest governed by two counterposed superpowers.) The first shock waves of
an oil crisis that revealed the fiscal precariousness of western capitalist states and the rise
to global importance of new Middle Eastern regimes were evident by 1973. A decadeand-a-half later, in 1989, the implosion of ‘actually existing socialism’ (Stalinism) in the
Soviet Union and its satellite states, provided another indication of world-historic change.
As the world changed dramatically in the last quarter of the 20th century, and became less
knowable in conventional terms, so too did the climate of historical interpretation shift.
Critical theory moved in new directions under the influence of Michel Foucault and a
host of thinkers who became known, loosely, as postmodernists. Within historiography
the postmodern aesthetic registered in the linguistic turn, which often accented a cultural
history of representation. Within this analytic shift, registered most profoundly in the
accelerating proliferation of historical subjects and open-ended inquiry, much that was
understood to be old and much that was old that was thought to be understood were
looked at anew, not from traditional perspectives, but from the view that nothing could be
taken for granted. The result, in the words of Peter Novick, author of That Noble Dream:
The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession (1988), was that the
‘centre did not hold’. New histories looked less to the structures of economy and the
institutions of political governance, and more to subjectivity and such previously
unanticipated topics as histories of the senses.
Within this general and acutely historical development of historiography, however, there
remain important continuities, in which the centrality of evidence and interpretation loom
large. Just how certain subject areas can be explored most effectively through specific
research methods and illuminated by particular theoretical traditions remain of interest to
all historians and, whatever the approach of any individual historian, he or she has much
to learn from grappling forthrightly with how others have ‘thought like a historian’. The
course will try to open out into a variety of ways of expanding understandings of
historical practice by offering students the opportunity to read and discuss among
themselves how the writing of history has changed, illuminating differences in
perspective, method, and conceptualization.
As such it will open with classes addressing the three ‘moments’ alluded to above:
conventional understandings of historical practice in the first half of the twentieth
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century; the era of ‘engagement’ and its meanings; and the challenge of destabilizing
thought in the era of postmodernism. It will then move on to specific texts that exemplify
approaches, methods and theoretical traditions that all historians should have a sensitive
appreciation of, including works that represent the major categories of conventional
historical practice: economic, political, intellectual, social, and cultural history. Examples
of the Annales School, microhistory, feminism, Marxism, and the linguistic turn will be
discussed, and selected interpretive debates associated with such orientations examined
where possible. There will be a conscious historical attempt to structure the course so that
different periods of history are addressed, just as there will be an effort to include
historical works from the broad range of areas that the History Department MA rests
upon.
Graduate Studies Academic Integrity
Trent University’s Graduate Academic Integrity Policy can be consulted and downloaded
in pdf form at www.trent.ca/calendar All students in History 5100 are to read and
familiarize themselves with the document, which is different than the similar policy
statement relating to undergraduates. Academic dishonesty of any form, including
plagiarism, will not be tolerated, and students at the graduate level are expected to know
what constitutes plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty, which includes,
generally, any attempt to pass off as your own research or work writing that was not
yours and yours alone.
Access to Instruction
Trent University and the History Department are inclusive learning environments.
Students with disabilities and/or health considerations requiring accommodations should
contact the Disability Services Office (BL Suite 109, 758-1281, email:
disabilityservices@trentu.ca) to put in place mechanisms that will allow them to
complete all course requirements with due consideration of their needs.
Availability of Texts
Many, if not most, of the texts utilized in the course have been ordered through the Trent
bookstore, and should be available by the second week of September, if not much before.
You are not expected to buy all the texts, but they are available for purchase in the event
that you do want to own specific books. Copies of some of the texts are available on line
(Visions of History, etc), while I will make available in the History Department Graduate
Seminar Room copies of most of the books we are reading. In addition, copies of the
journal articles, most of which are available on line, will also be made available.
Accessibility of texts should thus not be a problem. Used copies of these books may well
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be available in local or regional used bookstores, and there are likely copies of most of
the books available through ABEbooks.com.
Seminar Expectations
Students are not expected to lead any particular seminar, but they are expected to
contribute. To this the assigned readings must be read and thought about before the
seminar and students must come to class prepared to discuss the readings critically and
insightfully. This is a major component of any graduate work in History.
Weekly Meetings
1. Discussion of Course
No Reading
2. Introduction: Doing History—Thoughts and Provocations
Readings: J. H. Hexter, Doing History (1971), “The Rhetoric of History” and
“Doing History,” 15-76; 135-156.
David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (1985), 363-412.
John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
(2002), “The Landscape of History,” 1-16.
Gareth Stedman Jones, “History and Theory: an English Story,” Historeian: A
Review of the Past and Other Stories, 3 (2001), 103-124.
Part I Three Moments of Modern Historiography
3. Conventional Wisdoms: Not Always Wrong
Readings: E.H. Carr, What Is History? (1961)
Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and
The American Historical Profession (1988), 281-319.
4. New Histories of Engagement
Readings: Henry Abelove, ed., Visions of History: Interviews with … (1983),
read interviews with E.P. Thompson & Natalie Zemon Davis.
Geoff Eley, A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History
Of Society (2005), chapters 1 & 2, 1-60.
Novick, That Noble Dream, 415-521.
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5. Critical Theory and the Primacy of Language: Discourse, Representation, and the
Linguistic Turn
Readings: Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975,
Trans, 1977), 3-69.
Geoff Eley, A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of
Society (2005), chapters 4-5, 115-203.
Novick, That Noble Dream, 522-629.
Part II: The Basis of it All
6. On Evidence
Readings: Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (1997)
Keith Thomas, “Diary,” London Review of Books, 32 (10 June 2010).
Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft (1953), 60-90.
7. Getting It Wrong
Readings: Jon Weiner, Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, and Power in
The Ivory Tower (New York: New Press, 2004).
Ron Robin, Scandals & Scoundrels: Seven Cases That Shook the
Academy (Berekely: University of California Press, 2004).
Scott McLemee, “Re-Assassination of Trotsky,” Inside Higher
Education, 8 July 2011.
Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, 90-110.
Part III: Approaches/Methods
8. Marxism: Born of the Age of Revolution
Readings: Karl Marx, Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production,
Volume I, Chapter 10, “The Working Day,” Sections 6-7 entitled “The Struggle
for the Normal Working Day. Compulsory Limitation by Law of the WorkingTime. The English Factory Acts, 1833 to 1864.” And “The Struggle for the
Normal Working Day. Re-Action of the English Factory Acts On Other
Countries.” + Part VIII, “The So-Called Primitive Accumulation,” comprising
Chapters 26 through 33.
Eric Hobsbawm, How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism
(London: Little Brown, 2011), Chapters 14-15, “The Influence of Marxism, 19451983,” and “Marxism in Recession, 1983-2000,” 344-398.
9. Annales: Structures of the Longue Durée
Readings: Lucien Febvre, ed., Peter Burke, A New Kind of History and Other
Essays (1973), ix-43.
Fernand Braudel, On History (1980), vii-90, 177-218.
10. Microhistory: The Illuminations of the Particular
Readings: John Brewer, “Microhistory and the Histories of Everyday
Life,” Cultural and Social History, 7 (2010), 87-109.
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Giovanni Levi, “On Microhistory,” in Peter Burke, ed.,
New Perspectives on Historical Writing (1991), 93-113.
Matti Peltonen, “Clues, Margins, and Monads: The Micro-Macro
Link in Historical Research,” History and Theory, 40 (October 2001),
347-359.
Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a
Sixteenth-Century Miller (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1992).
11. Feminism and Women’s History
Reading: Joan Sangster, Through Feminist Eyes: Essays on Canadian
Women’s History (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2011),
Skip pp. 213-242, on oral history, which can be read in another
session below.
12. Oral History, Public History, and ‘Sharing’ Intellectual Authority
Readings: Steven High, “Sharing Authority in the Writing of Canadian History:
The Case of Oral History,” in Christopher Dummitt and Michael
Dawson, ed., Contesting Clio’s Craft: New Directions and Debates
In Canadian History (London: Institute for the Study of the Americas
2009), 21-46.
Leon Fink, “When Community Comes Home to Roost: The Southern
Milltown as Lost Cause,” Journal of Social History, 40 (Fall 2006),
119-145.
Allan Megill, Historical Knowledge, Historical Error: A
Contemporary Guide to Practice (Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 2007), either 17-40 or 41-59.
Joan Sangster, “Telling Our Stories: Feminist Debates and the Use of
Oral History,” Women’s History Review, 3 (1994), 5-27, also reprinted
in Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, ed., The Oral History Reader
(1997) and in Through Feminist Eyes, 213-242.
Alessandro Portelli, “What Makes Oral History Different?” in Portelli,
The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1991), 45-58.
13. Approaching Empire: Discourses
Reading: Edward Said, Orientalism (1978)
14. Ethnohistory
Reading: Keith Thor Carlson, The Power of Place, the Problem of Time:
Aboriginal Identity and Historical Consciousness in the Cauldron of
Colonialism (2010)
15. Intellectual History
Readings: Georges Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined (1981)
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Part IV: Subjects, Objects, Places
16. The Subjectivity of an Object
Reading: Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (2007)
17. Class Formation as Human Agency
Reading: E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963)
18. Apocalypse Now
Readings: Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination
Of Disaster (2000)
Adam Shatz, “The American Earthquake: Mike Davis and the Politics of
Disaster,” Linguafranca, 7 (September 1997)
19. Sensing Environments Under Siege
Reading: Joy Parr, Sensing Changes: Technologies, Environments, and
The Everyday, 1953-2003 (2010)
William Cronon, “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative,” Journal of
American History, 78 (March 1992), 1347-1376.
Part V: The History of Us All
20. Conclusion
Readings: Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age
Of Academe (1987)
Scott McLemee, “After the Last Intellectual,” bookforum.com Sept/Oct/Nov 2007
Course Requirements
Students are expected to attend weekly seminars, read the material outlined in the
syllabus and contribute to classroom discussions. There will be a grade assigned to the
level of your contribution to the weekly seminars, and a written assessment of your
contribution will provided towards the end of the first semester so that you understand
where the instructor thinks your strengths are and where he suggests a need for
improvement. If you disagree with this assessment, a meeting to discuss your
contribution to the class will be scheduled.
Two written assignments are also required for the course:
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1. Choose a thesis or major research paper topic. It is not necessarily the case that
this thesis topic/major research paper topic will indeed coincide with your own
thesis/MRP but it is suggested that doing so would be a good beginning in terms
of thinking of a direction in which your research will head. Write a 10-page
double-spaced essay on this topic in which you introduce the subject, situate it
within a specific framework (conceptual, historiographic, etc), develop a sense of
its meaning and importance, and provide and comment on a limited bibliography
of at least five book-length studies (or more, if articles are to be included in this
short list) that are of critical importance to your subject.
2. Choose an historian who has produced a significant body of scholarship and write
a 30 page essay on the significance of his or her work. Your essay should convey
a knowledge of the body of research and writing produced by the historian, situate
that work within historiographic developments, and locate the significance of
what the particular historian has contributed. You do not need to provide a
bibliography, but your essay’s footnotes need to convey an understanding of what
the author you have chosen has produced and where it can be located in terms of
trends in historical thinking and methodology. This research essay demands that
you choose an historian who has made an impact and whose work is significant
and can be discussed in ways that demonstrate this. It will be necessary for you to
read widely in your chosen historian’s work, as well as in commentaries, reviews,
and congruent literatures. This is a major research paper and can not be
researched and written in a matter of a few weeks. You should be thinking
about this project and how you are approaching it by the end of the first
semester and over the mid-year break you should be reading in your field of
inquiry. Consult a conventional style guide, for it is important that you follow
consistent procedures of referencing. An essay of this sort is enriched
considerably by appreciating the context in which the historian you have chosen
writes, and thus developing a sense of the intellectual and political climate within
which your chosen historian worked is important. This assignment is due at the
end of the course, the final date of submission to be determined after consultation
with the class.
Grading
Seminar Contribution
First Term Written Assignment
Second Term Written Assignment
20%
30%
50%