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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of History, Classics and Archaeology : Postgraduate (History, Classics and Archaeology)

Postgraduate Course: History as Romance, Profession, Critique: Theory and Scholarship in the West, 1835 to 1985 (PGHC11332)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of History, Classics and Archaeology CollegeCollege of Humanities and Social Science
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryCritical engagement with the history of historical inquiry now extends into and beyond the province of intellectual historians. Indeed, attempts to trace the methodological, epistemological, ideological, institutional, and stylistic trends that have characterised the theory and practice of historical scholarship now constitute a growing preoccupation for social, material, cultural, and political historians. In turn, such preoccupations with the history of our professional endeavours have made their mark on the ways that we teach our students, justify our applications for research funding, frame our written and oral presentations, and to an extent evaluate the rigorousness of historical scholarship. While knowledge-transfer becomes a significant means of evaluating the public benefits of historical studies, so have historians' abilities to make sense of our own professional pasts.
Course description Readings for this course will be extensive, and will comprise theoretical and historical publications that document and interpret the following:
1. Introduction: Historismus and Geschichtswissenschaft: Ranke, Humboldt, and the first principles of the historical profession.
2. Michelet's popularization of Vico's Scienze Nuova, 1835
3. Positivism across the Channel: Auguste Comte, J. S. Mill, and T. H. Buckle
4. Historical materialism and social science: Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Lamprecht
5. Historical sensibility at the end of the Great War: Croce, Collingwood, Spengler
6. Crossing disciplines: Annales 1929-1940: Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre
7. Widening purviews: Annales 1949-1967: Fernand Braudel
8. Microhistory and histoire totale: Annales in the 1960s: Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
9. Revolutionary history through historical analysis: Eric Hobsbawm
10. Semiotics and the linguistic turn, 1974: Clifford Geertz and Hayden White
11. History as Critique, 1985: Joan Wallach Scott

Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesNone
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered
Learning Outcomes
This course will enable graduate students to engage meaningfully with the key philosophical concepts, research methods, and publications that have contributed to the history of modern historical inquiry in Western Europe and North America. Using Jules Michelet's popular rediscovery of Giambattista Vico's Scienza Nuova (1725) in 1835 as a primary reference-point for the course, we will address the ways in which historians who maintained a wide range of intellectual commitments (including nationalist, romantic, positivist, sociological, anthropological, structuralist, and poststructuralist commitments) have made use of historical scholarship and Viconian historicism to elaborate their projects. Drawing on theoretical readings and historical publications from across the West that span 150 years, the weekly readings and discussion also will feature documentary evidence to illustrate the legacies of this past in current professional practice.

Students who complete this course successfully will have demonstrated the following skills:
* To identify and interpret significant events in the history of modern historical scholarship in the West, beyond those addressed directly on the course syllabus
* To develop effective strategies for analysing a range of sources that document and interpret such events;
* To demonstrate a meaningful appreciation of links between theoretical concepts and historical methodology, doing so through oral, interpretive, and research-based presentations;
* To make effective use of a range of primary and secondary sources, from across traditional Humanities disciplines, to frame a historical research project;
* To appreciate the methodological abilities and limitations of the sources required for advanced studies in historiography, including materials published and unpublished, translated and untranslated.
Reading List
Sources and Texts
References for the weekly readings will be provided in the original and in English translation. All will be available for consultation in the Main Library and National Library of Scotland. The major readings will be available either online or in paperback.

Reference works
Bennett, Tony et al, eds. New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.
Budd, Adam. Ed. The Modern Historiography Reader: Western Sources. London: Routledge, 2009.
Bullock, Alan and Stephen Trombley, eds. The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought. Third edition. London: Fontana, 1999.
Gooch, G. P. History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Longmans, 1935.
Kramer, Lloyd and Sarah Maza, eds. A Companion to Western Historical Thought. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.
Munslow, Alun. The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies. London: Routledge, 2000.
Hughes-Warrington, Marnie. Fifty Key Thinkers on History. London: Routledge, 2000.
Woolf, Daniel. Ed. A Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing. New York: Garland, 2003. 2 vols.

Introductory texts
Bentley, Michael, ed. Companion to Historiography. London: Routledge, 1997.
---. Modern Historiography: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 1999.
Berger, Stefan, et al, eds. Writing History: Theory and Practice. London: Hodder Arnold, 2003.
Black, Jeremy. Maps and History: Constructing Images of the Past. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.
Breisach, Ernst. Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. Third edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Brown, Donald E. Hierarchy, History, and Human Nature: The Social Origins of Historical Consciousness. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988
Burke, Peter. History and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993.
---, ed. New Perspectives on Historical Writing. Second edition. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991.
Burns, Robert M., ed. Historiography: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies. 5 vols. London; New York: Routledge, 2005.
--- and Hugh Rayment-Pickard, eds. Philosophies of History: From Enlightenment to Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.
Burrow, John. A History of Histories. London: Allen Lane, 2007.
Carr, David, et al, eds. The Ethics of History. Evanston, IL: Northwest University Press, 2004.
De Groot, Jerome. Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture. London: Routledge, 2009.
Fay, Brian, et al, eds. History and Theory: Contemporary Readings. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.
Febvre, Lucien. A Geographical Introduction to History. 1913. Trans. G. Mountford and J. H. Paxton. London: Routledge, 2008.
Fink, Carole. Marc Bloch: A Life in History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Green, Anna. Cultural History. London: Palgrave, 2008.
Haskell, Francis. History and Its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
Hingham, John. History: Professional Scholarship in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965.
Iggers, George G. Historiography in the Twentieth Century, with a New Epilogue. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005.
---. and Q. Edward Wang. A Global History of Modern Historiography. London: Longmans, 2008.
Jenkins, Keith et al, eds. Manifestos for History. London: Routledge, 2007.
Jordanova, Ludmilla. History as Practice. Second edition. London: Hodder Arnold, 2006.
Kelley, Donald R. Faces of History: Historical Inquiry from Herodotus to Herder. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
---. Fortunes of History: Historical Inquiry from Herder to Huizinga. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
---. Frontiers of History: Historical Inquiry in the Twentieth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Keylor, W. Academy and Community: The Foundation of the French Historical Profession. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975.
Krieger, L. Ranke: The Meaning of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.
Lorenz, Chris. "Comparative Historiography: Problems and Perspectives," History and Theory 38. 1999): 25-39.
Manning, Patrick. Navigating World History: Past, Present, and Future of a Global Field. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003.
Lowenthal, David. The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Momigliano, Arnaldo. Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography. New edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
Monkkonnen, Eric H., ed. Engaging the Past: The Uses of History across the Social Sciences. Durham, Duke University Press, 1994.
Orr, Linda. "The Revenge of Literature: A History of History," New Literary History 18. 1986-1987): 1-21.
Patterson, Annabel. Nobody's Perfect: A New Whig Interpretation of History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
Reill, P. H. The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.
Ringer, Fritz. The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890-1933. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969.
Sato, Masayuki. "Comparative Ideas of Chronology," History and Theory 30 (1991): 275-301.
Steig, Margaret F. The Origin and Development of Scholarly Historical Journals. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1986.
Stuchtey, Benedict, and Eckhardt Fuchs, eds. Writing World History: 1800-2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Key texts
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.
Auerbach, Erich, "Vico and Aesthetic Historism." 1959. Scenes from the Drama of European Literature. Minneapolis: of Minnesota P, 1984.
Bentley, M. Modernising England's Past: English Historiography in the Age of Modernism 1870-1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Bloch, Marc. The Historian's Craft. 1941. Trans. Peter Putnam. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1955.
---. The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France. 1924. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973.
Braudel, Fernand. The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization and Capitalism, 15th to 18th Centuries, Volume 1. 1979. London: William Collins, 1981.
Burguière, André. "The Fate of the History of the Mentalités in the Annales." Society for Comparative Study of Society and History 24 (1982): 424-437.
Burke, Peter. The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School, 1929-1989. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990.
Butterfield, Herbert. The Whig Interpretation of History. London: G. Bell, 1931.
Clark, Stuart. "French Historians and Early Modern Popular Culture." Past and Present 100 (1983): 62-99.
Collingwood, R.G. "Oswald Spengler and the Theory of Historical Cycles." Antiquity (1927): 311-25.
Comte, Auguste. An Introduction to Positive Philosophy. 1840. Trans. F. Ferré. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1970.
Croce, Benedetto, Theory and History of Historiography, trans. D. Ainslie. New York: General Books, 1921.
Davis, Natalie Zemon "Rabelais among the Censors (1940s, 1540s)." Representations 32.1 (1990): 1-32.
Dilthey, Wilhelm. Introduction to the Human Sciences. 1923. Trans. W. Kluback and M. Weinbaum. Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 1957.
Durkheim, Émile Selected Writings. Trans. Anthony Giddens. Cambridge: CUP, 1972
--. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. 1897. LondonL Routledge 1952.
Geertz, Clifford. "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture," The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York, 1973. 3-30.
Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Revolutions: 1789-1948. London: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1962.
Hughes, H. Stuart. The Obstructed Path: French Social Thought in the Years of Desperation 1930-1960. New York: Harper & Row, 1969.
Humboldt, Wilhelm von. "On the Historian's Task." 1822. Trans. Louis O. Mink. History and Theory 6 (1967): 57-71.
Hutton, Patrick H. "The History of Mentalities: The New Map of Cultural History." History and Theory 20.3 (1981): 237-59.
Iggers, Georg. The German Conception of History. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1968.
---. "Historicism: The History and Meaning of the Term." Journal of the History of Ideas 56 (1995): 129-152.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1963.
Lamprecht, Karl Gotthard. "Historical Development and Present Character of the Science of History." What Is History? Five Lectures on the Modern Science of History. Trans. E. A. Andrews. London: Macmillan, 1905. 1-36.
Le Roy Ladurie, Emanuel. The Peasants of Languedoc. 1966. Trans. J. Day. Carbondale, IL: U. of Illinois P, 1976.
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels, "Premises of the Materialist Conception of History." 1845. The German Ideology. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998.
Michelet, Jules. Principles on the Philosophy of History, by Vico. Trans. Ashraf Noor. New Vico Studies 26 (2008).
Mill, J. S. "The Historical Method." 1843. A System of Logica Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. Rpt. 8th edn. London: Duckworth, 1987. 102-119.
Momigliano, Arnaldo. "The Introduction of History as an Academic Subject and Its Implications." Ottavo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico (Rome, 1987): 161-78.
Nietzsche, Friedrich, "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life," Untimely Meditations, ed. and trans. R. J. Hollindale. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983.
Novick, P. That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity' Question and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Popper, Karl. The Poverty of Historicism. 1957. London: Routledge, 2006.
Ranke, Leopold von. Theory and Practice in History, ed. Georg Iggers. Trans. W. Iggers. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973.
Rhodes, Colbert. "Emile Durkheim and the Socio-Historical Thought of Lucien Febvre." International Journal of Contemporary Sociology. 25 (1988): 65-82.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Random House, 1978.
Scott, Joan Wallach. "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis." 1985. Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia UP, 1988).
---. "History-Writing as Critique" in Jenkins et al, Manifestos for History. 2007. 19-38.
Schöttler, P. "The Rhine as an Object of Historical Controversy in the Inter-war Years: Towards a History of Frontier Mentalities." History Workshop Journal 39 (1995): 1-22.
Skinner, Quentin, ed. The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985.
Smith, Bonnie G. The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1998.
Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West. 1919. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991.
Vico, Giambattista. Principles of the New Science concerning the Common Nature of Nations. 1725. New Science. Trans. David Marsh. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999.
Weber, Max. "On the Concept of Sociology and the 'Meaning' of Social Conduct." 1922. Trans. H. P. Secher. London: Peter Owen, 1962.
--. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. 1904. London: Routledge, 2005.
White, Hayden. "The Historical Text as Literary Artifact," Tropics of Discourse. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978. 81-100.
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
KeywordsNot entered
Contacts
Course organiserDr Adam Budd
Tel: (0131 6)51 3761
Email: adam.budd@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMrs Lindsay Scott
Tel: (0131 6)50 9948
Email: Lindsay.Scott@ed.ac.uk
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