Introduction to Historical Methods

REQUIRED BOOKS

• Charles C. Bolton and Scott P. Culclasure, The Confessions of Edward Isham: A Poor White Life in the Old South • Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a 16th Century Miller • Georg Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century

GRADING

50 points Scavenger hunt (due 9/26) 50 points Film interpretation (due 10/17) 100 points Historiography essay (due 10/26) 100 points Annotated bibliography (due 11/9) 50 points Presentation (11/28-30) 100 points Final paper (due 12/5) 50 points Attendance and participation

500 points Total

SCHEDULE

Aug 22 Course overview, introductions

Aug 24 What is history?

Aug 29 The Confessions of Edward Isham: A Poor White Life in the Old South, xv-18

Aug 31 The Confessions of Edward Isham (selections)

Sept 7 Scavenger hunt (meet on second floor of Library North)

Sept 12 Georg Iggers, Historiography in the 20th Century, 1-50

Sept 14 John Demos, “The Traditional World and the Logic of Circularity”

Sept 19 No class

Sept 21 Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a 16th Century Miller

Sept 26 JB Jackson, “The Nineteenth Century Rural Landscape: The Courthouse, the Small College, the Mineral Springs, and the Country Store,” in Landscape in Sight, 185-197

Alain Corbin, Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the 19th Century French Countryside, xii-12

Sept 28 Elizabeth Fraterrigo, “The Answer to Suburbia: Playboy’s Urban Lifestyle”

Scavenger hunt due

Oct 3 William Cronon, “A Place for Stories: Nature, History and Narrative”

Oct 5 JB Jackson, “The Movable Dwelling and How It Came to America” in Landscape in Sight, 210-224

Oct 10 Jack Temple Kirby, “Retro Frontiersmen” in The Countercultural South, 33-56

Project topic due

Oct 12 William Riordon, “Preface,” “Honest Graft,” “New York City Is Pie for the Hayseeds,” and “Dangers of the Dress Suit in Politics,” in Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics

Paris Is Burning (film)

Oct 17 Paris Is Burning discussion

Film interpretation due

Oct 19 John R. Gennari, “Recovering the ‘Noisy Lostness’: History in the Age of Jazz”

Oct 24 No class

Oct 26 Writing workshop

Historiography essay due

Oct 31 Iggers, 149-160

Shabbir Akhtar, A Faith for All Seasons: Islam and the Challenge of the Modern World, 3-23

Nov 3 Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 143-163

Nov 7 Jeremy Prestholdt, Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and the Genealogies of Globalization, 13-33

Nov 9 Reading material culture

Annotated bibliography due

Nov 14 No class

Nov 16 No class; office hours for final paper consultation

Nov 28 Presentations

Nov 30 Presentations

Dec 5 Final papers due