Seminar in Historical Methods

Readings

LEC #	TOPICS	READINGS
1	Introduction - The Meanings of History
2	Words, The Building Blocks	Williams, Raymond. Keywords. Introduction (26 pp.) and 15 entries (especially recommended: history, culture, art, industry, democracy, civilization, class, educated, work). Hunt, Lynn. “The Rhetoric of Revolution.” In Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. Pp. 19-51. Fraser, Nancy, and Linda Gordon. “A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State.” Signs 19, 2 (1994).
3	The Historian’s Voice	White, Hayden. “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality.” In The Content of the Form. Pp. 1-25. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. “The October Revolution of 1917 in Russia.” Excerpts from The Russian Revolution. Pp. 40-67. Trotsky, Leon. The Russian Revolution. Pp. 304-335. Brower, Daniel, ed. The Russian Revolution. Pp. 40-48, 57-81. (Selections by John Keep, “Revolution in the Factories”; Marc Ferro, “Citizen-Soldiers in the Revolutionary Struggle”; I. I. Mints, “Lenin’s Revolutionary Leadership”; Robert Daniels, “The Unpredictable Revolution.”) Pipes, Richard. Three Why’s of the Russian Revolution. Pp. 31-62.
4	Interrogating Evidence	Ginzburg, Carlo. “The Inquisitor as Anthropologist,” and “Witchcraft and Popular Piety: Notes on a Modenese Trial of 1519.” In Clues, Myths, and The Historical Method. Baltimore, 1992, pp. 1-16, 156-164. Davis, Natalie Zemon. Fiction in the Archives. Pp. 1-114, 141-42.
5	Evidence From The Physical World	Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England. Pp. vii-x, 3-156.
6	Voice and Historical Subject	Demos, John. Unredeemed Captive. Preface, pp. 3-198, 237-41.
7	Oral History	Appy, Christian. Working-Class War. Pp. 1-85, 117-44, 206-49, 298-321.
8	Macro-Historical Structures	Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. Pp. 9-13 (Preface), 17-76, 102-85, 269-314 (“The Weavers”), 711-46.
9	Drama in History (Guest Speaker: Jeff Ravel)	Maza, Sara. Private Lives and Public Affairs. Pp. 1-17, 167-211 (“Diamond Necklace Affair”). Darnton, Robert. “The Great Cat Massacre.” Pp. 76-104. Mah, Harold. “Suppressing the Text: The Metaphysics of Ethnographic History in Darnton’s Great Cat Massacre.” History Workshop 31 (Spring 1991): 1-20. Chartier, Roger. “Text, Symbols, and Frenchness.” Journal of Modern History 57 (1985): 682-95. LeCapra, Dominick. “Chartier, Darnton, and The Great Symbol Massacre.” Journal of Modern History 60 (1988): 95-112.
10	Comparative History	Kolchin, Peter. Unfree Labor. Pp. ix-xiii, 1-102. Plus one further chapter (to be divided among the class).
11	“Truth” and “Falsehood” - Narratives and Counter-narratives	Wood, Elizabeth A. “The Trial of Lenin: Legitimating the Revolution Through Political Theater, 1920-1923.” Russian Review (April 2002): 1-15. Tucker, Robert C. “Stalin, Bukharin, and History as Conspiracy.” In The Great Purge Trial. Edited by Tucker. New York, 1965, pp. ix-xlviii. Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror. 1990, pp. 341-98. Cohen, Stephen F. Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution. Pp. 372-81.
12	Class Presentations
13	Memory and History, Part I	Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Beacon Press, 1995 (entire).
14	Memory, Part II