Theories and Methods in the Study of History

Readings and Discussion Schedule

SES #	TOPICS / DISCUSSIONS	READINGS
1	Introduction	No readings assigned.
2	History and Place History and Place History and Place Discussion Questions (PDF)	Braudel, Fernand. Part I—sections I, II, IV in The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II Vol I. University of California Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780520203082. [Preview with Google Books] Grove, A. T., and Oliver Rackham. The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: An Ecological History. Yale University Press, 2003, pp. 37–44, 130–40, and 151–66. ISBN: 9780300100556. Suggested Hellicar, Martin. “Debunking the Myth of a Lost Eden.” Global Dialogue 4, no. 1 (2002). (The Fragile Biosphere.) Braudel, Fernand. The Journal of Modern History. Vol. 44. The University of Chicago Press, 1972, pp. 448–67. Trevor–Roper, H. R. “Fernand Braudel, the Annales, and the Mediterranean.” The Journal of Modern History 44, no. 4 (1972): 468–79. Hexter, J. H. “Fernand Braudel and the Monde Braudellien….” The Journal of Modern History 44, no. 4 (1972): 480–539.
3	18th c. Political Culture and 21st c. Digital Humanities Guest: Prof. Jeff Ravel, MIT History Department Discussion Questions from Prof. Ravel (PDF) (Courtesy of Jeffrey Ravel. Used with permission.)	Darnton, Robert. Poetry and the Police: Communication Networks in Eighteenth–Century Paris. Belknap Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780674057159. [Preview with Google Books] Recordings of Eighteenth–Century Cabaret Songs Discussed by Darnton in Poetry and the Police Clay, Lauren. “Consumers of Culture.” In Stagestruck: The Business of the Theater in Eighteenth–Century France and Its Colonies. Cornell University Press, 2013, pp. 163–94 and 295–304. ISBN: 9780801450389. [Preview with Google Books] Darnton, Robert. “Readers Respond to Rousseau: The Fabrication of Romantic Sensibility.” In The Great Cat Massacre, and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. Basic Books, 1984, pp. 215–56. ISBN: 9780465027002. [Preview with Google Books] Suggested The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe Darnton, Robert. “A Literary Tour de France.” Comédie–Française Registers Project
4	History and Material Evidence Guest: Prof. William Broadhead, MIT History Department Discussion Questions from Prof. Broadhead (PDF) (Courtesy of Will Broadhead. Used with permission.)	Wallace‐Hadrill, Andrew. Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Princeton University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780691029092. [Preview with Google Books]
5	Transnational History Guest: Prof. Sana Aiyar, MIT History Department	Cooper, Frederick. “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History.” The American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (1994): 1516–45. Aiyar, Sana. “Anticolonial Homelands across the Indian Ocean: The Politics of the Indian Diaspora in Kenya, ca. 1930–1950.” The American Historical Review 116, no. 4 (2011): 987–1013. Cooper, Frederick. Chapters 2 and 5 in Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History. University of California Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780520244146.
6	Academic Journals: How to read them and how to publish in them	No new readings assigned.
7	Maps as History	Brook, Timothy. Mr. Selden’s Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer. Bloomsbury Press, 2013. ISBN: 9781620401439.
8	Public History Guest: Prof. Chris Capozzola, MIT History Department	Kohn, Richard H. “History and the Culture Wars: The Case of the Smithsonian Institution’s Enola Gay Exhibition.” The Journal of American History 82, no. 3 (1995): 1036–63. Martinez, Raquel. “The Volunteers: Americans Join World War I, 1914–1919.” (2014): 3–9, 18–27 and 49–52. Capozzola, Christopher. Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen. Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 3–20 and 83–116. ISBN: 9780195335491. [Preview with Google Books] Little, Branden. “Humanitarian Relief in Europe and the Analogue of War, 1914–1918.” In Finding Common Ground: New Directions in First World War Studies. Edited by Jennifer Keene and Michael Neiberg. Brill, 2010. ISBN: 9789004191822. [Preview with Google Books]
9	History of a People	van Reybrouck, David. Congo: The Epic History of a People. Ecco, 2014. Or Hamalainen, Pekka. The Comanche Empire. Yale University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780300151176.
10	Environmental History Guest: Prof. Anya Zilberstein, Concordia University History Department Discussion Questions from Prof. Zilberstein (PDF) (Courtesy of Anya Zilberstein. Used with permission.)	Cronon, William. Changes in the Land, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. Hill and Wang, 2003. ISBN: 9780809016341. [Preview with Google Books] Zilberstein, Anya. Chapters from the forthcoming “A Temperate Empire: Making Climate Change in Early America.” ———. “Inured to Empire: Wild Rice and Climate Change.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d series 72, no. 1 (2015): 127–58.
11	History of Technology and Business Guest: Prof. JoAnne Yates, MIT Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management	JoAnne, Yates, and Craig Murphy. Control through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780801846137. [Preview with Google Books] ———. “The Role of Firms in Industrial Standards Setting: Participation, Process and Balance.” (PDF) (Courtesy of JoAnne Yates and Craig Murphy. Used with permission.)
12	Memoir as History	Law–Yone, Wendy. Golden Parasol: A Daughter’s Memoir of Burma. Vintage, 2014. ISBN: 9780099555995. Or Cooper, Helene. The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood. Simon & Schuster, 2009. ISBN: 9780743266253.
13	Big History / Beyond History	Morris, Ian. The Measure of Civilization: How Social Development Decides the Fate of Nations. Princeton University Press, 2014. ISBN: 9780691160863. [Preview with Google Books] (Selections) ———. Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future. Picador, 2011. ISBN: 9780312611699. [Preview with Google Books] (Selections) Suggested Persson, K. G. “The Malthus Delusion.” European Review of Economic History 12, no. 2 (2008): 165–73.
14	Oral Presentations of Final Papers	No new readings assigned.