Courses:

The following syllabi come from a variety of different terms. They illustrate the evolution of this course over time, and are intended to provide alternate views into the instruction of this course.

Fall 2008, Anne McCants (PDF)

The purpose of this course is to acquaint you with a variety of approaches to the past used by historians writing in the twentieth century. Most of the books on the list constitute, in my view (and others), modern classics, or potential classics, in social, economic and cultural history. We will examine how historians conceive of their object of study, how they use primary sources as a basis for their accounts, how they structure the narrative and analytic discussion of their topic, and what are the advantages and drawbacks of their various approaches.

Historians as a community pursue a huge variety of topics with widely disparate methodologies. A central concern of ours will be the question: is history a discipline? Do historians have anything in common? Or are they a rather random collection of people united only by a shared interest in the past (but excluding geologists, paleontologists and such like on one end and journalists on the other)?

It would be impossible to survey everything that historians do. The works I have chosen emphasize long term social processes, the experiences of ordinary people, individually or as a group, collective mentalities, and the structures of material life. They downplay the prominence of great leaders (kings, queens, generals, philosophers, scientists), the simple narration of political events, or the analysis of idea systems divorced from their political and social context. They share an openness to the use of concepts from related social sciences (anthropology, sociology, and economics). They aim to reconstruct the experience of everyone who lived in the past, and they pay special attention to the obscure, the oppressed, and the poor. They try to transcend the narrow boundaries inflicted on historians (and everyone else) by an exclusive concentration on the fortunes of the nation state and its leaders. Also, I have featured topics in which members of the MIT History department are currently doing research. If possible, we will invite them to the class, so that you may become acquainted with them and their work.

This approach to history originated with the French founders of the Annales school, Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, around the turn of the century. (The school is named after the journal which they founded and co-edited.) Since its founding, the Annales school has exerted tremendous influence on historical writing around the world. This approach has also made a sgnificant impact on non Western history, especially that of Asia. Of course, many other trends contributed to and altered the Annales paradigm. Things did not look the same when Annales topics migrated to England, the U.S. or China. But following the themes of this historical approach over time provides a useful way to unify the course and to get some sense of the commonality of historical problems across time and space.

Our focus is on structure, methodology, and conceptualization, not on specific historical content. A sizeable proportion of the studies here focus on early modern Europe (roughly 1500 - 1800 A.D.). As you can see, there is also representation from nineteenth and even twentieth century Europe, America, and China. I would urge you to read in areas with which you are not familiar as well as in home ground. It is not necessary to "know the facts" or become an expert in any of these areas; the point is to find out how similar historical approaches work in different cultural areas and time periods.

Course Requirements

1. Read the core readings for each week and be prepared to discuss them in class. Many of these classics are long, fat books. I will generally leave it to you to devise the best way of tackling them. (Starting at page one and plowing straight through is almost never the best method.)
   
   
2. Read or skim at least one of the works from the supplementary list. Each week you should submit before the class meeting (perhaps by Tuesday evening), a one page discussion of your reactions to the reading (not summaries, but critiques: reasoned argument is preferred, but gripes and raves are allowed). These will be useful in stimulating discussion. (You can submit these by email if you want, to a group list we will devise.) Also, you will be asked each week to report on one of the supplementary readings, orally: this can be more of a summary with critique and should be geared to the exchange of information between students reading different selections.
   
   
3. Finally, at the end of the term, a longer paper is due (10-15 pp). You are free to choose the subject, but you should take one of two tacks: 1) "Horizontal": examine the characteristics of the same historical approach used in several different countries and time periods (one of these countries should be non Western), e.g. the historical demography of 17th century France and Japan; the history of women in twentieth century Russia and China. 2) "Vertical": examine a variety of perspectives on the same historical topic (the French Revolution is the classic one: it is open to Marxist, populist, economic, cultural, feminist, and many other interpretations). Other good possibilities might include the English Industrial Revolution, American slavery, European imperialism. In either case, you need to search out the major works in the literature, analyze the basic problematique, discuss the different analytic tools and sources already employed to pursue the subject, and evaluate the relative merit of different approaches. You might even have ideas of your own about where work in this sub-field should go, which you should feel free to develop. You will find, I suspect, that science and technology get short shrift in most historians' accounts. You could certainly think about how they might usefully be more usefully integrated into general historical accounts.

Grading

Students submit discussion sheet/questions every week (50% of grade) and write a final paper (50% of grade).