History 5000: Historiography
Fall 2002


    "[The Graduate history seminar] has evolved from a nursery of dogma into a laboratory of scientific truth."
-Herbert Baxter Adams, "Special Methods of Historical Study," 1886.

"We want nothing more to do with the approximations of hypotheses, useless systems, theories as brilliant as they are deceptive, superfluous moralities.  Facts, facts, facts-- which carry within themselves their lesson and their philosophy.  The truth, all the truth, and nothing but the truth."
-Henri Houssaye, before the First Congress of Historians, 1900.

"The politics which mainstream historians have admired are unreal and unprincipled... [W]e will not go away, and we will simply not allow you the luxury of continuing to call yourselves politically neutral while you exclude all this from your history."
-Jesse Lemisch, American Historical Association annual meeting, 1969.

"Feminists have put to rest the myth of the female dependence on men and rediscovered the significance of woman bonding.  I find it personally gratifying that the lesbian-feminist concept of woman-identified woman has historical roots in the friendships, networks an institutions of the nineteenth century.  The historical sisterhood... can teach us a great deal about putting women first, whether as friends, lovers, or political allies."
-Estelle Freedman, Feminist Studies, 1979.

What passes for wisdom among my own colleagues is that science is a Western disease.. that all descriptions of social life are fabrications; and that empirical research is nothing but a bourgeois dirty trick."
-Marvin Harris, New York Times op ed piece, 1978.




    Historiography explores the different ways that historians have sought to know about and explain the past.  It is roughly analogous to "the science of history," in the same manner that biology is "the science of life."  Biologists study the living world using methods and conventions established by their profession.  Historians study the past using their own professionally sanctioned methods and conventions.  Historians who study historiography also follow established scholarly procedures to critically examine their own discipline-- the research and writing of history, and how that research and writing has changed over time.
    But historiography and history are also different from biology because, as all graduate history students know, all history is interpretation.  Interpretation introduces the human element: individual tastes, social conventions, politics, prejudices-- in a word, subjectivity.  For this reason, it is philosophically possible (possible, though not necessarily accurate) to argue that all interpretations are equal; that interpretation is no more than opinion, or even worse, advocacy.  While in this class we will encounter arguments that deny the claims to objectivity made by science, today most biologists would utterly reject such un-scientific reflections on their discipline.  Subjectivity, after all, is said to make for very bad science.  And what is bad for science is often said to be bad for history-- or so many people have argued.
    As the above suggests, historiography has both practical and philosophical dimension.  On a practical level, this course will illuminate the processes-- the methodologies and the theories-- that historians have used to develop coherent interpretations of the past.  As such, it should serve as an excellent foundation for you as you develop your own research interests in this program.  You will learn about Whig, progressive, counter-progressive, Marxist, Neo-Marxist, and postmodern approaches to history, largely by reading representative examples from U.S., European, and World history.  We hope that you will be better prepared to both recognize these approaches in historical writing and, perhaps, apply theory self-consciously in your own teaching and writing.
    On a philosophical level, this course will prompts you to question the fundamental nature of the historian's project.  What is history, and what methods are best designed to illuminate it?  What is the historian's relationship to the past?  Should history writing "have an agenda," beyond that of expanding knowledge about the past?  Are there works of history that are more "objective," more "true," than others, or is every interpretation necessarily "subjective" and therefore equally valid, equally "true"?
    These are complicated and challenging questions that admit no easy answers.  But they have been a part of professional discourse since at least the 1920s, and have been particularly vital since the 1960s.  Indeed, the philosophical issues raised by doing history are suggested in the quotes that appear at the top of this syllabus (read them no, if you haven't already!).  We in the history department believe that you will be better historians and teachers for grappling with these issues.  That is why this class is required.

Requirements

This course not only introduces you to historiography, but also to the historians in this department.  Ten professors will come in to lead you in exploring the historiography on a topic within their areas of respective specialization.  Each will assign reading to be done during the week prior to meeting with you.  Each will also provide discussion questions and a question to serve as the basis for a short (2-3 pp.) position paper.  You may choose from among them three position papers which you will write and turn i to me on the day that the readings are due.  You will also write one longer paper (12-15 pp., due at the last class meeting on 12/12), which will be an in-depth critical review of the historiography on (or related to) one of the topics presented over the course of the term.  There will be no examinations.  This is a seminar: it is understood that  you will come to each class prepared and ready to participate in meaningful discussion.

Texts

J. Appleby, L. Hunt, M. Jacob, Telling the Truth about History
Gary Kates, The French Revolution: Recent Debates and New Controversies
Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The Objectivity Question in American Historical Scholarship
As assigned by each professor, distributed as in-class handouts

Grading

Discussion Participation in class meetings:    30%
3 position papers:                                       30%
Critical Essay:                                             40%

Critical Essays will be advised by the professor specializing in the chosen topic.  All grading will be done by me.

Note: Students with documented disabilities requiring special accommodations should discuss this with me by the 2nd week of the semester.


Schedule

Intro:                    Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives

Week 1: 8/26      Introduction to Historiography (Voss-Hubbard)
Week 2: 9/5        History as nationalism; the progressives and the counter-progressives (Voss-Hubbard)
Week 3: 9/12      The Whig interpretation of History (Key)
Week 4: 9/19       Marxism as history and historiography (Shelton)
Week 5: 9/26     Neo-Marxism and the linguistic turn (Voss-Hubbard)

Cases:                European Historiography

Week 6: 10/3     The Pirenne Thesis in Medieval Historiography (Young)
Week 7: 10/10    The French Revolution (Smith)

                            U.S. Historiography

Week 8: 10/17    Separate Spheres in Early America (LeMaster)
Week 9: 10/24     American Slavery (Hardeman)
Week 10: 10/31    Race and Class in Antebellum America (Voss-Hubbard)
Week 11: 11/7    The Historiography of U.S. Diplomacy (Wehrle)

                            The Non-West

Week 12: 11/14    Historiography of Latin America (Deustua)
Week 13: 11/21    Asia, Islam (Levi)
Week 14: 12/5     Imperialism, Orientalism, & Neo-Colonialism (Beck)

Week 15: 12/12    Students will present critical essays    (Voss-Hubbard)