21H.931 | Spring 2004 | Undergraduate

Seminar in Historical Methods

Readings

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  

Course Info

Instructor
Departments
As Taught In
Spring 2004
Learning Resource Types
Lecture Videos
Written Assignments with Examples