HIS 6061: Historiography
Schedule of Readings, Assignments, and Discussion Topics

Week 1: 1/11 – What is History?

Introductions and Overview of Course
E.H. Carr, What is History (entire book)
Introduction to Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob, Telling the Truth about History (ER)


Week 2: 1/18 – Ancient & Late Antique Understandings of the Past  [Discussion:  Andrew & Eleanor]

            *Reports on “influential book”  [Adrienne, Dana, Jessica, Russell, Sean]

            Readings from Kelley, ed., Versions of History: 
                    19-28 (intro to Greece & Homer, Hesiod, Herotodus)
                    69-72 (intro to Rome & Livy)
                    75-80 (Cicero)
                    86-88 (Pliny the Younger)
                    89-105 (Sallust, Tacitus, Ammianus Marcellinus)
                    117-121 (intro to the Judeo-Christian Tradition & Daniel)
                    128-136 (Eusebius, Josephus)
                    142-154 (Augustine & Orosius)

 Thucydides, On Justice, Power, and Human Nature: Selections from The History of the Peloponnesian War, 1-50; 89-95; 111-123; 145-160.

Report:  Edward Gibbon [Michael F.]


Week 3: 1/25 –  Late Antique (cont.) and Medieval Visions of History  [Discussion:  Rebecca & Sean]

            *Reports on “influential book” [Anthony, Brian, Michael G, Shannon] 

Primary Sources
            Eusebius of Caesarea, Life of Constantine, excerpts, RWCH, 87-96 [ER]

            Recommended:  Zosimus, Book II.29-34 (Short excerpt: a pagan Roman historian's view of Constantine)
            Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Preface and Book I, Chs. 1-8 [available on-line]
            Readings from Kelley, ed., Versions of History
                    167-173:  “Barbarian History” (Jordanes, Gregory of Tours & Fredegar)
                    192-193:  Fulcher of Chartres
                    212-214:  Joachim of Flora
            Adso of Montier-en-Der, “
Letter on the Origin and Time of the Antichrist,” RWCH, 285-288 [ER] – A recent translation of the whole text except for the prologue can be found here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/primary/adsoletter.htm
            Jean Froissart, Chronicles (Penguin edition), selections [ER]

Secondary Sources
            Averil Cameron, “Remaking the Past,” in G.W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar, Late Antiquity. A Guide to the Post-Classical World (1999), 1-16. [ER-eventually; meanwhile in-library use on 3rd floor - reference] 

Medieval Studies Today:
            John Van Engen, “The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem,”
The American Historical Review Vol. 91, No. 3 (Jun., 1986): 519-552. [JSTOR] 
            Paul Freedman and Gabrielle Spiegel,
“Medievalisms Old and New: The Rediscovery of Alterity in North American Studies,” American Historical Review 103, No. 3 (June 1998), 677-704. [JSTOR]

Report:  Arthur Lovejoy and The Great Chain of Being  [Andrew]


Week 4: 2/1 – Renaissance Visions of History [Discussion:  Michael G. & Brian]

*Reports on “influential book”

Readings from Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on Titus Livy [Not the whole thing; selections coming...]
            Francesco Guicciardini, The History of Italy, (Princeton, 1969), 3-21 [ER]
            Felix Gilbert, “Guicciardini,” in Machiavelli and Guicciardini (Princeton, 1965), 271-301. [ER]
            Anthony Grafton, "Dating history: the Renaissance and the reformation of chronology," Daedalus, Spring 2003, 73-85. [ER or JSTOR]
            Excerpts from Jakob Burkhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Read selections of your choice from all 6 sections: http://www.idbsu.edu/courses/hy309/docs/burckhardt/burckhardt.html
            Alison Brown, “Jacob Burkhardt’s Renaissance,” History Today 38 (October 1988), 20-26. [JSTOR]
            Christine de Pizan (1363-1431), Selections from The Book of the City of Ladies [ER]
            Jean-Kelly Gadol, “Did Women have a Renaissance?” In Becoming Visible: Woman in European History, ed. R. Bridenthal and C. Koonz, Boston, 1977, 137-64.

Reports:  Hans Baron; Paul Oskar Kristeller


Week 5: 2/8 – Early Modern; Religion & Violence [Discussion:  Adrienne, Dana, & Shannon; Written Comments:  Russell & Rebecca]

 1. Emergence & Impact of Print
 Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, 1983, 3-11; 148-186.
 AHR Forum: How Revolutionary was the Print Revolution?,  American Historical Review, vol. 107, number 1, Feb. 2002, 84-128:
“Introduction” (Anthony Grafton)
“An Unacknowledged Revolution Revisited” (Elizabeth Eisenstein)
“How to Acknowledge a Revolution” (Adrian Johns) 
"Reply" (Elizabeth Eisenstein)

2. Early modern religion and history; Religious violence
Primary Sources:
Excerpts from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, ed. G.A. Williamson, London, 1965: “The Martyrdom of Ridley and Latimer,” 290-311
Johannes Sleidanus, John Calvin, Earl of Clarendon in Kelley, ed., 320-333; 340-346

Secondary Sources:
            David Nirenberg, “Introduction” and “France, Source of Troubles: Shepherds’ Crusade and Lepers’ Plot (1320, 1321),” in Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1996), 3-17, 43-68.
            Brad Gregory, "'To the point of shedding your blood' The Bible, Communities of Faith, and Martyrs' Resistance to Conversion in the Reformation Era," in Conversions: Old Worlds and New, Rochester, 2003, 66-86
            Natalie Davis, "The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France,” Past and Present 59 (1973), 51-91. 
            Inga Clendinnen, “Disciplining the Indians: Franciscan ideology and missionary violence in sixteenth-century Yucatan,” Past and Present 94 (1982), 27-48.


Week 6: 2/15 – The Enlightenment  [Discussion:  Jessica & Michael F.; written responses: Dana & Adrienne]

 Primary Sources:
             Jean Bodin (1530-96) in Kelley, 380-394
             Jean Mabillon (1623-1707) in Kelley, 413-417
             Montesquieu (1689-1755)
, Selections from The Persian Letters in The Enlightenment: A Comprehensive Anthology, ed. Peter Gay, 122-143.
             Voltaire (1694-1778), Entry for Denis Diderot’s Encyclopedia in Kelley, 442-446
             Voltaire, Advice to a Journalist; Introduction to The Age of Louis XIV in Fritz Stern, ed., The Varieties of History: From Voltaire to the Present, 36-38; 40-44
            Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) in Kelley, 474-477
            Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803) in Kelley, 477-487

Secondary Sources:
            Carl L. Becker, Everyman his own historian: Essays on history and politics, New York, 1935, 233-255
            Charles Beard, "Written history as an act of faith," American Historical Review 39 (1934), 219-229
            Carl Becker, Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (Yale, 1932)

Report:  Carl Becker [Eleanor]


Week 7:  2/22 – History & Marxism [Discussion:  Anthony & Russell; written responses:  Sean & Eleanor] 

Friedrich Engels, The German Peasant War of 1525, New York, 1966: Author's preface to the second edition (vii-xiv); 1-46 (Chapters I-IV); 70-83 (Chapters VI—VII); 87-91: Twelve Articles of the Peasants
            Peter Blickle, “The Economic, Social and Political Background of the Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants of 1525,” in Janos Bak, ed., The German Peasant War, London, 1976, 63-75.
            E.P. Thompson—selections from The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1966) preface, exploitation, class consciousness [scan should be up by Friday noon]
            Eugene Genovese—selections from “Marxian Interpretations of the Slave South” in Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History, ed. B. Bernstein, 99-106.
            Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh, “The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, and the Atlantic Working Class in the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Historical Sociology, 3 (1990), 225-252.

Show and Tell: Find a Marxist historian in your field! 

            Report:  E.P. Thompson [Michael G.]