Required Texts
Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780520063297.
Davis, Natalie. The Return of Martin Guerre. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780674766914.
Demos, John. The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1995. ISBN: 9780679759614.
Hunt, Lynn, et al. Telling the Truth About History. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 1995. ISBN: 9780393312867.
Lee, James Z., and Wang Feng. One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities, 1700-2000. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780674007093.
Lewis, C. S. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780521477352.
Krech, Shepard. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000. ISBN: 9780393321005.
Readings by Class Session
| SES # | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction | A Midwife’s Tale. (The film version.) |
| 2 | Narrative and History | The Return of Martin Guerre. |
| 3 | Narrative and History (cont.) | The Unredeemed Captive. |
| 4 | The Annales School |
Braudel, Fernand. Mediterranean. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1992. ISBN: 9780060159580. (selections) Hexter, J. H. “Fernand Braudel and the Monde Braudellien.” Journal of Modern History 44 (1972): 480-539. Extra Reading if Interested Hufton, Olwen. “Fernand Braudel.” Past and Present no. 112 (August, 1986): 208-213. |
| Individual meetings to review research proposals | none | |
| 5 | Gender and History | Holy Feast, Holy Fast. pp. 1-186 (and distribute part III amongst the class). |
| 6 | The Middle Ages as Fantasy |
The Discarded Image. Cantor, Norman. “The Oxford Fantasists.” In Inventing the Middle Ages. New York: W. Morrow, 1991. Selections from Tolkien, J. R. R. “Beowulf and the Critics.” (Manuscript dating early 1930s.) |
| 7 | The MIT Mix - Or How Does a History Department Work? |
Dower, John. “Race, Language, and War in Two Cultures.” In Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays. New York: New Press, 1993. Jacobs, Meg. “How About Some Meat?: The Office of Price Administration, Consumption Politics, and State Building from the Bottom Up, 1941-1946.” Journal of American History 84, no. 3 (1997). McCants, Anne. “The Not-So-Merry Widows of Amsterdam, 1740-1782.” Journal of Family History 24, no. 4 (1999). Perdue, Peter. “Empire and Nation in Comparative Perspective: Frontier Administration in 18th c China.” Journal of Early Modern History 5, no. 4 (2001). Ravel, Jeff. “The Coachman’s Bare Rump: an 18th French Cover-up.” Unpublished manuscript, 2003. Ritvo, Harriet. “Race, Breed, and Myths of Origin: Chillingham Cattle as Ancient Britons.” Representations 39 (Summer, 1992). |
| 8 | Thinking About Doing History |
Telling the Truth About History. Tilly, Charles. “How (and What) are Historians Doing?” In American Behavioral Scientist, July–August 1990. pp. 685-711. |
| 9 | Environment and History | The Ecological Indian. pp. 9-104, and 145-189. |
| Drafts Due | ||
| 10 | Sunday Field Trip | Excursion to Peabody-Essex Museum to tour the Chinese Merchant’s House . |
| 11 | Demography and History | One Quarter of Humanity. |
| 12 | Culture and History |
Darnton, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1985. ISBN: 9780394729275. Mah, Harold. “Suppressing the Text: The Metaphysics of Ethnographic History in Darnton’s Great Cat Massacre.” History Workshop 31 (Spring, 1991). |
| 13 | Class Presentations |
