Trends, Debates, Historians II (HIST 512)

2022 Fall
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
History(HIST)
3
10
Ayşe Ozil ayseozil@sabanciuniv.edu,
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English
Doctoral, Master
--
Formal lecture,Interactive lecture,Seminar
Discussion based learning
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CONTENT

The second semester of the required HIST 511-512 sequence in Historiography pursues the same "complete readings" approach into major works concentrating on first the Early Modern and then the Modern era. Once more, historians are studied individually, and trends or schools are for the most part introduced through the historians that embody their distinctive approaches. Authors dealt with over the second semester may be as diverse as Febvre, Braudel, Le Roy Ladurie, Christopher Hill, Keith Thomas, E. P. Thompson, Charles Tilly, Simon Schama and Carlo Ginzburg, as well as Hobsbawm, Blackbourn, Landes, Eugen Weber, Peter Gay or François Furet. Crucial debates, for example on "the transition from feudalism to capitalism" and its Brenner follow-up, or on "the military revolution and the genesis of the modern state", are introduced as separate files or appendices. The last quarter of the course is devoted to a closing survey of the current proliferation of outlooks and approaches, including discussions of microhistory, cultural history, history of mentalities, the return of the narrative, the return of the state, as well as modernist vs post-modernist positions on the question of "historical truth", "myth-making", or the relationship between literature and history.

OBJECTIVE

Refer to the course content

LEARNING OUTCOMES

  • Upon completion of this course, students will demonstrate an understanding of how to place each historian and school against a larger historical background, intellectual climate and dominant paradigm.
  • Students will be able to articulate precisely what is the originality of the contribution of a particular historian or school in the professionalization and diversification of the historical discipline.
  • Students will demonstrate how to examine the factors that make theoretical paradigms prevail and wane and how these influence and force historians to revise current predominant interpretations.
  • Students will familiarize themselves with complex concepts and methodologies to pursue further specialized study in the field of historiography.
  • Students will develop a greater capacity to engage at the same time and with equal precision in the historical, theoretical, and philosophical debate over outstanding intellectual matters.

ASSESSMENT METHODS and CRITERIA

  Percentage (%)
Final 30
Term-Paper 35
Participation 15
Presentation 20

RECOMENDED or REQUIRED READINGS

Readings

Week 1: History and Historiography
R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), Introduction.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, On the Historian?s Task (1822), in The Modern Historiography Reader, ed. Adam Budd (London: Routledge, 2009), 167-171.
Week 2: Practicing History: Evidence, Causation and Interpretation
E. H. Carr, What is History? (Middlesex: Penguin, 1964), Ch. 4.
R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), Epilegomena 3.
Ludmilla Jordanova, History in Practice (London: Arnold Publishers, 2000), Chs. 4 and 7.
Carlo Ginzburg, ?The Judge and the Historian?, Critical Inquiry, vol. 18, no. 1 (1991), 79-92.
Week 3: Early Modern Historiography - The Republic of Letters
Wolfgang Reinhard, ?The Idea of Early Modern History?, in Companion to Historiography, ed. Michael Bentley (London: Routledge, 1997), 281-292.
Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), Chs. 4 and 7.
Anthony Grafton, What was History?, Chs. 1 and 4. (IC online)
Week 4: Historiography of the Enlightenment
Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chs. 1, 15, and 16.
Roy Porter, Gibbon: Making History (London: Phoenix, 1988), Chs. 1, 2, 3.
Week 5: Early Modern Historiography: The Social Space
Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (London: Fontana Press, 1991), Introduction, Chs. 2, 3, 4, 5.
Week 6: The Nineteenth Century: German Historical Thought, National Historiography and Professionalization
Stefan Berger, ?The Invention of European National Traditions in European Romanticism?, in The Oxford History of Historical Writing, eds. Macintyre et.al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 19-40.
L. von Ranke, Histories of the Latin and German Nations: Preface to the First Edition, in The Modern Historiography Reader, ed. Adam Budd (London: Routledge, 2009).
Georg Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1997), Part I: The Emergence of History as a Professional Discipline.
Gabriele Lingelbach, ?The Institutionalization and Professionalization of History in Europe and the United States?, in The Oxford History of Historical Writing, eds. S Macintyre et.al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), Chapter 4.
Week 7: Twentieth Century: The Annales School
Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean (London: Fontana/Collings, 1975), vol. 1.
Peter Burke, ?Fernand Braudel?, in The Annales School: Critical Assessments, ed. Stuart Clark, vol. 3 (London: Routledge 1999).
Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).
Week 8: Microhistory
Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992 [1980]).
Carlo Ginzburg, ?The Inquisitor as Anthropologist?, in Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, Carlo Ginzburg (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).
Week 9: Revisiting the long durée?
David Armitage and Jo Guldi, The History Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
D. Cohen and P. Mandler, ?The History Manifesto: A Critique?, AHR (2015).
Week 10: Global History
Sebastian Conrad, What is Global History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).
Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).
Week 11: Global Microhistory
Tonio Andrade, ?A Chinese Farmer, Two African Boys and a Warlord: Toward a Global Microhistory?, Journal of World History, vol. 21, no. 4 (2010), 573-591.
John Paul Ghobrial, ?Moving Stories and What They Tell Us: Early Modern Mobility between Microhistory and Global History?, Past and Present, Supplement no. 14 (1999), 243-280.
Week 12: Connected Histories
Michael Werner and Benedicte Zimmermann, ?Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity?, History and Theory, vol. 45, no. 1 (2006), 30-50.
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ?Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia?, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 31, no. 3 (1997), 735-762.
Week 13: Transnational Histories
AHR Conversation: On Transnational History, C. A. Bayly, Sven Beckert, Matthew Connelly, Isabel Hofmeyr, Wendy Kozol, Patricia Seed, The American Historical Review, vol. 111, no. 5 (2006), 1441-1464.
Konstantina Zanou, Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean 1800-1850: Stammering the Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
Week 14: Presentation of final paper drafts