HY 665: History Colloquium

Fall 2021, Mondays 6-8.30pm, ten Hoor 256

Dr. Matthew Lockwood Office Hours: Tuesdays, 12.00-1.00 by

Office: ten Hoor 216 Zoom or by appointment
Email: [email protected]

Course Description
This course is designed to be an introduction to major theoretical and methodological
approaches in modern historiography. Texts will range from foundational nineteenth-
century works to the cutting-edge histories of the past decade. By the end of the course,
students should be able to identify major historiographical movements, place these
movements in conversation with each other, and understand the impact that the
approaches have had on their own fields of interest. At its core, this course is intended as
an introduction to the practice of history.

Part I: Texts and Assessment

Books
All assigned books are available as paperbacks from the university bookstore; many will
also be available there in a used edition. You may also choose to buy the books online
(from a used-book retailers like abebooks.com or an independent consortium like
bookshop.org, as well as your usual large-scale retailers, etc.) or request it from the
library/interlibrary loan. However, if you choose this option, please ensure that your
books have arrived before class begins. Also, please, if you check the book out of the
library, be a good classmate and return it promptly. Some digital copies will be available.

Sunil Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal. (Harvard, 2015)

David Blight, Race and Reunion: the Civil War in American Memory. (Harvard, 2002 ed.)

Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs. (UNC, 1996)

E.H. Carr, What Is History. (Vintage, 1967)

George Chauncey, Gay New York (Basic, 1995)

William Cronon, Changes in the Land. (Hill and Wang, 2003)

Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre. (Basic, 2009)

G.R. Elton, The Practice of History. (Wiley-Blackwell, 1991)

The Essential E.P. Thompson. (The New Press, 2001)

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Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. (Vintage, 1995)

Ute Frevert, The Politics of Humiliation. (Oxford, 2020)

Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie, The Peasants of Languedoc. (Illinois, 1977)

Edward Said, Orientalism. (Vintage, 1979)

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale. (Random House, 1990)

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. (Penguin, 2002 edition)

Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (UNC, 1994 edition)

In addition, you will be reading chapters/articles/essays Clifford Geertz, Gayatri Spivak,

Joan Scott, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Judith Pollman, all of which will be posted to
Blackboard.

Assignments
Response Essays (15%): brief (c. 500-750 word) essays on the assigned readings. These
should not merely be summaries but should analyze the central question of the text, the
methodologies used, the type/quality of the evidence deployed, and/or the central
argument. Evaluations (e.g. ‘this approach is not successful because...’ or ‘this argument is
well supported by...’) are acceptable but should not compose the bulk of your response.

If there is more than one reading for the class, you should use this essay to tie the readings
together, examining the ways in which the questions, methods, or arguments coincide or
conflict. You should not treat each reading as a discrete piece but rather as part of a
larger discourse.

You should complete three of these essays; the choice of which three is yours. They
should be posted on Blackboard, not emailed to me. Late essays—those posted after the
beginning of class—will not be accepted.

Class Participation (30%): discussion is vital to this class. You should come prepared
to engage directly with the sources and with your classmates. Please have the texts with
you, as well as any notes you may have made. NB: engaging is a process of both listening
and speaking; speaking should also reflect a sustained engagement with the work.

Class Presentation (20%): beginning on September 13, each class will begin with a
joint presentation of the work, lasting c. 10 minutes. These presentations should give an
analysis of the text and explore the methodology and evidence, as well as touch on at least
one of the additional texts listed for the week. (If monographs, the full book from the list
of further reading does not need to be read, but the introduction/conclusion should at
minimum be discussed; articles should be read more substantially.)

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The presentation should include a handout with a brief summary of the works and 3-4
substantive, analytic questions about the text, which should be emailed to the class no
later than noon on the date of the presentation. It is up to the students to divide the work
in an equitable fashion. My copy of the handout should indicate who contributed what.

Long Paper (35%): this 10-12 page essay is due on December 6th by midnight. It should
explore one or more of the approaches we have discussed in relation to your own
interests, analyzing the ways in which one of the theories/approaches/ methods we
discuss has been used in your field of study. For instance, you could write about the
influence of Marxism on the American Revolution, queer history in Victorian Britain, or
postcolonial studies in modern Latin America. It will be up to you to find a list of books
that applies one of the theories to your field, though I am happy to help point you in the
right direction. This is not merely to be a recitation of works but an analytical and
substantive interaction with both the historiography and theory. More details will be
given in the coming weeks.

Part II: Reading Schedule

NB: Items marked with an asterisk (*) will be posted to Blackboard.

August 23: What is history?

E.H. Carr, What is History?
G.R. Elton, The Practice of History

Further Reading:
Richard J. Evans, ‘What is History?—Now’ in What is History Now? ed. David
Cannadine
Ulinka Rublack, ‘The Status of Historical Knowledge’ in A Concise Companion to History
ed. Ulinka Rublack.

August 30: Sociology

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (originally 1904-5)

Further Reading:
Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process
Karl Polyani, The Great Transformation
Charles Tilly, The Vendée: a Sociological Analysis of the Counter-revolution of 1793 or Coercion,
Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990
Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China.

September 6: No class—Labor Day

September 13: Annales School

Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie, The Peasants of Languedoc

Further Reading:
Ferdinand Braudel, A History of Civilizations

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 The Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II
Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie, Montaillou
Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, Vol I: The Growth and Ties of Dependence
Pierre Goubert, The French Peasantry in the Seventeenth Century

September 20: Marxist and Labor History [ZOOM]

The Essential E.P. Thompson, Parts I and IV
Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery

Further Reading:
Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto (especially preamble and part I) and Eighteenth of Brumaire
Sonya Rose, Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth Century England
John Ashworth, Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic
Christopher Hill, Puritanism and Revolution
Robert Brenner, ‘Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial
Europe’ in Past and Present (70), pp. 30-75; for more see The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class
Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe ed. Aston and Philpin (1985)

September 27: Anthropology and Cultural History

Clifford Geertz, ‘Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight’ in The Interpretation of
Cultures*
Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre

Further Reading:
Natalie Zemon-Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic
Burke, What Is Cultural History?
Victoria Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, eds., Beyond the Cultural Turn
Roger Chartier, “Review: Text, Symbols, and Frenchness’ in Journal of Modern History (Vol
57, No 4), pp. 682-95.

October 4: Microhistory
Laurel Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale

Further Reading:
Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms
Jonathan Spence, The Question of Hu
Keith Wrightson, Ralph Tailor’s Summer: A Scrivener, His City, and the Plague
Donna Merwick, Death of a Notary: Conquest and Change in Colonial New York
Eamon Duffy, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village

October 11: Postmodernism, Language, and Power

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish

Further Reading:
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology
Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge

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Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse
Gabrielle Spiegel, “History, Historicism, and the Social Logic of the Text in the Middle
Ages,” Speculum, Vol 65, No. 1, pp. 59-86.

October 18: Postcolonialism and Subaltern Studies

Edward Said, Orientalism
Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”*

Further Reading:
Partha Chatterjee, The Black Hole of Empire
Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India
Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture
Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization.
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe
Bill Ashcroft, “Modernity’s First Born: Latin America and Postcolonial Transformation”

October 25: Gender History

Joan Scott, ‘Is Gender a Useful Category of Analysis’*
Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs

Further Readings:
Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast, Holy Fast: the Religious Significance of Food to Medieval
Women
Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil
War
Daina Ramey Berry, Swing the Sickle for the Harvest is Ripe: Gender and Slavery in Antebellum
Georgia
Glenda Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow
Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England
Ann Little, Abraham in Arms: War and Gender in Colonial New England
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble

November 1: Queer History

George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World,
1890-1940
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, ch. 1*

Further Readings:
Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present
John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality
Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers
Matt Houlbrook, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957.
John Howard, Men Like That: a Southern Queer History
Paper Topic Due in Class

November 8: History of Memory

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David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
Judith Pollman, Memory in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800, Introduction*

Further Readings:
Mabel Wilson, Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums.
Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust
Annie Coombes, History after Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South
Africa
Julie Des Jardins, Women and the Historical Enterprise in America: Gender, Race, and the Politics of
Memory.

November 15: Transnational History

Sunil Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal

Further Readings:
Andrew Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the
Globalization of the New South (2010)
Kornel Chang, Pacific Connections: the Making of the US-Canadians
Penny Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War
Madeline Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration between the
United States and South China
Matthew Lockwood, To Begin the World Over Again: How the American Revolution Devastated the
Globe
Matt Matsuda, Pacific Worlds: a History of Seas, Peoples, and Cultures

November 22 Environmental History: No class

William Cronon, Changes in the Land

Further Readings:
Louis Perez, Winds of Change: Hurricanes and the Transformation of Nineteenth-Century Cuba
Robert Harms, Games Against Nature: An Eco-Cultural History of the Nunu of Equatorial Africa
Catherine McNeur, Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City
Ling Zhang, The River, the Plain, and the State: An Environmental Drama in Northern Song China,
1048-1128
William Calvert, The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City

November 29: History of Emotions

Ute Frevert, The Politics of Humiliation

Further Readings:
Janet Plamper, The History of Emotions: an Introduction
William Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling
Joanna Bourke, Fear: a Cultural history
Barbara Rosenwein, Anger: the Conflicted History of an Emotion
Peter Stearns, Shame: a Brief History

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Part III: Policies
Academic Misconduct: The university defines academic misconduct as “all acts of
dishonesty in any academically related matter and any knowing or intentional help or
attempt to help, or conspiracy to help, another student commit an act of academic
dishonesty.” All work must be fully cited, including both direct quotations and
paraphrases; any ideas that are not fully your own must include a citation (a footnote or,
in the case of the weekly essays, either a footnote or a parenthetical citation). We will
discuss academic integrity in class; however, please familiarize yourself with the entire
Alabama policy on academic misconduct: http://facultyhandbook.ua.edu/appendix-
c.html

Attendance: Attendance is compulsory for all meetings. Excused absences can be

arranged for illness, bereavement, university commitments, religious holidays and other
events; however, excuse must be sought before the class unless in case of emergency.
Unexcused absences will drop your participation grade by a full letter per absence. More
than three unexcused absences may result in more severe penalties, including failure of the
course.

Please do not attend if you are ill—just let me know ahead of time for an excused
absence. Excused absences will not be penalized.

Excused absences are required to be made up with either a writing response or a tutorial
session with me, unless otherwise arranged. Failure to do this in an agreed-to timeframe
will result in the absence becoming unexcused.

With the pandemic, I realize that attendance may prove difficult for some of you, for a
variety of reasons. All I ask is that you stay in open communication with me; students will
not be penalized for any Covid modifications they might need.

Disability Policy: The Offices of Disability Services determines academic

accommodations for students, based on appropriate documentation and the academic
requirements of the individual program. It is your responsibility to seek assistance, and
students should contact the ODS as detailed in the online catalogue or by phone at
205.348.4285. Requests must be made in a timely fashion. I will be happy to make
accommodations as the ODS determines.

This semester ODS is also able to process Covid-related accomodations:

http://ods.ua.edu/covid-19-disability/

Late Work: Response essays must be submitted before class; late response essays will not
be accepted. The long paper is due on December 6 by midnight. For each 24 hours that
the paper is late, it will drop by a full letter grade. Papers more than three days late (i.e.
after 11.59 on December 9) will not be accepted and will receive a 0.

If prior arrangement is sought, extensions may be granted. This will, however, only be in
exceptional circumstances (e.g. illness, bereavement, etc.). Being unprepared is not a
sufficient excuse for an extension.

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Office Hours: office hours will be held by Zoom. Regular office hours for this class will
be set aside from 12-1 on Monday, with signups by Doodle. Meetings can also be
scheduled by appointment.

Religious Holidays: “The University of Alabama respects the religious diversity of our
academic community and recognizes the importance of religious holy days and
observances in the lives of our community members.” I will be happy to “make
reasonable efforts to accommodate sincerely held religious practices and observances of
students.” [See http://provost.ua.edu/religious-observances.html]

Severe Weather: “The safety and well-being of our students, employees and visitors is
our highest priority at The University of Alabama. Please be familiar with UA’s severe
weather guidelines and be prepared to quickly move to safety if severe weather occurs.”
Please see additional policy information at https://ready.ua.edu/severe-weather-
guidelines/ .

UAct: “The University of Alabama is committed to an ethical, inclusive community

defined by respect and civility. The UAct website
[https://www.ua.edu/campuslife/uact/] provides extensive information on how to
report or obtain assistance with a variety of issues, including issues related to dating
violence, domestic violence, stalking , sexual assault, sexual violence or other Title IX
violations, illegal discrimination, harassment, child abuse or neglect, hazing, threat
assessment, retaliation, and ethical violations or fraud.”