Professor TJ Boisseau The
Office: 204B Department of History
Office hours: Tu
Office Ph: x6277
Historiography
Fall 2006
3400:689:801 (71202)
Tu 5:20-7:50 CAS 205
Course description
The primary goal of this course is to provide incoming
graduate students with the opportunity to think seriously and systematically
about history as a discipline shaped by many and often contradictory concerns,
as a profession with its own historical trajectory, and as an intellectual
project requiring intense metacognitive
consideration. Students will be
introduced to a selection of significant historical writings culled from
various fields of historical inquiry.
They will also encounter quite recent synthetic and exploratory
theoretical writings by philosophers, social critics, theoreticians, and
historians of history. The purpose of
juxtaposing these two different types of scholarship is to encourage students
to critique their own and others’ conceptualizations of history and historical
methodologies and to enable them to participate effectively within the intra-
as well as cross-disciplinary debates and discourses with which professional
historians are currently engaged.
Class schedule
Aug 29 Introduction: Walter Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History”
Sep 5 Unit
I: Theory
12
Unit 2: Power
19
Unit 3. Hegemony
26
Unit 4: Invention
Oct 3 Unit 5:
Construction
10
The Knepper Lecture
17
Unit 6: The Body Politic
24
Unit 7: Collectivity
31
Unit 8: Colonialism
Nov 7 Unit 9:
Identity
14 Unit 10:
Subjectivity
21 Student presentations
28 Student presentations
Dec 5 History graduate conference
Assignments and
Evaluation
Class participation 60%
Students are expected to come to class fully prepared to
engage in discussion
of all reading assigned for that
day, to engage strenuously with their peers—listening
as well as speaking—with the aim of
generating effective, productive, and spirited dialogue.
Weekly oral
presentation 10%
Students (individuals or in pairs depending on class size)
will make ‘background and
significance’ presentations on
readings assigned for that day. (10 minutes)
Final essay and
presentation 20%
Students will submit short (5-7 page)
essays evaluating the value to the pursuit of
historical knowledge of specific
scholars and theoretical approaches encountered in
the course. Students will share and discuss their work in
class on November 28.
Knepper lecture and history graduate conference 10%
Students are required to attend the Knepper
lecture held during class time on October 10 and
including, if possible, an arranged
discussion with the lecturer to be held earlier the same day
as well as a ‘mock panel’ held
during Practicum (Tues 4-5) the week prior.
Students are also
required to attend the history
graduate conference that will be held during final class meeting.
Required
texts: These are on order from
the UA bookstore but can be purchased more cheaply through the internet.
Callum G. Brown, Postmodernism
for Historians (Pearson Longman, 2005).
ISBN: 05820642
Sara Mills, Michel Foucault (Routledge Critical Thinkers Series) (Routledge,
2003. ISBN: 0415245699
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (Vintage,
1979). ISBN: 00679752552
Benedict Anderson, Imagined
Communities (Verso 1983): ISBN: 00860915468
E. Hobsbawm / T. Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge U Press,
1983). ISBN: 0521437733
Martin Lewis / Karen Wigen, The Myth of Continents (U of California Press,
1997). ISBN: 0520207432
Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of
History (Columbia University Press, 1997). ISBN:
00231118570
Denise Riley, Am I that Name? (University of Minnesota Press, 1988) . ISBN: 0816642699
Cynthia Weber, Faking It (University of Minnesota
Press, 1999) .
ISBN: 0081663270
Lauren Berlant, The
Queen of
Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed
Hydra (Beacon Press, 2000) . ISBN:
0807050075
E. P. Thompson, The
Making of the English Working Class (Vintage 1966). ISBN:
0394703227
Antonio Negri
and Michael Hardt, Empire (
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Multitude (Penguin 2004) . ISBN:
1594200246
Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes (Routledge
1992)
Edward Said, Orientalism (Vintage
1979). ISBN: 041506958
Simon During, The
Cultural Studies Reader (Routledge 1993). ISBN:
0415077095
Joan Scott and Judith Butler, Feminists Theorize the
Political (Routledge 1992). ISBN:
0415902746
Note that [R] indicates this text can be found in the course
reader.
9/5 Unit I:
Theory
Callum G. Brown, Postmodernism for
Historians
Hayden White, Metahistory, pp. 1-42 [R]
Lauren Berlant, “What Does Queer
Theory Teach Us About X?” [R]
9/12 Unit
II: Power
Sara Mills, Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
Hayden White, “Foucault’s Discourse” in The Content of
the Form, pp. 104-41 [R]
9/19 Unit III:
Hegemony
Antonio Gramsci, excerpts from Selections
from the Prison Notebooks, pp. 3-43 [R]
Louis Althusser, “Ideological
State Apparatus” [R}
John Docker, Postmodernism and
Popular Culture: 36-63 [R]
Dick Hebdige, “From Culture to
Hegemony” in During, pp. 357-67
Stuart Hall, “Encoding/Decoding,” in During, pp. 90-103
Roland Barthes, “Dominici,” in During, pp. 44-48
Theodor Adorno
and Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry,” in
During, pp. 29-43
9/26 Unit IV:
Invention
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, Chapters
1-4, 6, 8, 9
Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, Chapters 4-7
Martin Lewis and Karen Wigen, The Myth of Continents, Chapters 1-5
10/3 Unit V:
Construction
Barbara Fields, “Ideology and Race in American History,” pp. 143-77 [R}
Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History,
Chapters 2 and 4
Denise Riley, Am I That Name?
Edward Said, excerpt from Orientalism,pp.
132-149 [R]
10/10 The Knepper
Lecture
10/17 Unit VI:
The Body Politic
Cynthia Weber, Faking It
Lauren Berlant, The
Queen of
10/24 Unit VII:
Collectivity
Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed
Hydra, Intro,
chap 1, 2, 6, 7 and Conclusion
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class,
Preface and chapters 1, 3
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Empire, Preface and Part I, 3.4, 3.6, Part 4
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Multitude, Preface, chap 1, 2.3, 3.1, and pp.
328-340
10/31 Unit
VIII: Colonialism
Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes
11/7 Unit IX:
Identity
Paul Gilroy, “The Whisper Wakes,” [R]
Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” [R]
Rey Chow, “Where Have All the
Natives Gone?” [R]
Patrick Joyce, from “The End of Social History,” [R]
11/14 Unit X:
Subjectivity
Dipesh Chakrabarty,
“Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History” [R]
Interview with Michel Foucault in During The
Cultural Studies Reader, pp. 161-69
11/21 Student presentations
11/28 Student presentations
12/5 History Graduate Conference
Course Reader contents
Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History” see online
source:
http:/www.tasc.ac.uk/depart/media/staff/ls/WBenjamin/CONCEPT2.hteml
Hayden White, excerpt from Metahistory
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983):
1-42.
Lauren Berlant, “What Does Queer
Theory Teach Us About X?” PMLA 110:3 (March 1995): 343-49.
Hayden White, “Foucault’s Discourse” in The Content of
the Form (Johns Hopkins Press, 1987):
104-41.
Antonio Gramsci, excerpts from Selections
from the Prison Notebooks, ed by Quinton Hoare and
G. N. Smith (International Publishers 1971):
3-43.
Louis Althusser, “Ideological
State Apparatus” in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays trans. Ben
Brewster (Monthly Review Press 1971):
John Docker, Postmodernism and
Popular Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1994): 36-63.
Barbara Fields, “Ideology and Race in American History” in Region,
Race, and Reconstruction, ed. J. Morgan Krouser
et al (Oxford University press, 1982):
143-77.
Edward Said, excerpt from Orientalism
in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, ed by Patrick Williams
and Laura Chrisman (Columbia University Press 1994): 132-49.
Patrick Joyce, from “The End of Social History,” in Historians
on History ed by John Tosh
(Pearson Education Unlimited 2000):
274-82.
Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” in Contemporary
Postcolonial Theory: A Reader ed. By Padmini Mongia
(
Rey Chow, “Where Have All the
Natives Gone?” ” in Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader ed. By Padmini Mongia (
Dipesh Chakrabarty,
“Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History,” in Contemporary
Postcolonial Theory: A Reader ed. By Padmini Mongia
(