History 744.002: The Historian's Craft (Fall, 2005)
Wednesdays, 5:30 - 8:00 p.m.
Place: Battelle Tompkins Lounge

About the Course:  This is a course about how historians (and not just historians!) make history.   We will begin by exploring some of the large,  philosophical and theoretical issues that have engaged historians in recent decades.  We will also survey the broad and ever changing topography of historical practice -- what historians do and how do they do it. We will also examine  popular history making and the production of historical consciousness.  

The Colloquium: On some evenings we will break early (c. 7:00) for a graduate colloquium that will include talks by members of the American University history faculty, who will share with us their thoughts on current developments in their own fields.  Colloquium guests will also include guest speakers on such diverse topics as archives, databases, computer applications and the teaching of history.

Readings: Reading for the course is both extensive and intensive. You will be expected to keep up with the readings and to arrive at class well prepared to engage in spirited discussion. You will need to purchase copies of at least six or seven books.  However, some of the readings assigned for the class will be available through Library databases such as JSTOR, ProQuest and Project Muse, or through the Library’s Electronic Reserve.  To access articles on Electronic Reserve, go to Blackboard (see below) and click on “Course Documents.”

Required Readings:

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities.

Thomas Bender (ed.),  Rethinking American History in a Global Age.

Michael Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (excerpts).

Michael J. Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson (eds.), Explaining American Foreign Policy, 2nd edition.

Lynn Hunt, The New Cultural History.

David Lyon, Postmodernity (2nd ed.).

Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The Objectivity Question and the American Historical Profession.

David R. Roediger, The Wages of  Whiteness.

Edward W. Said, Orientalism. 

Mike Wallace, Mickey Mouse History.

Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and other Unnatural Acts.

David J. Staley, Computers, Visualization and History: How New Technology Will Transform Our Understanding of the Past.

The Assignments:  This course is not only reading intensive.  It is also writing intensive.  Each week you will be asked to distill what you have read and incorporate it in your own words and into your own thinking.  Assignments will normally be posted on the class’s Blackboard Discussion Board no later than two days before the scheduled discussion.  You will also be required to read and post comments on what your classmates have written before class (see below).  You will be encouraged to post "afterthoughts" following our class discussions.  

The Importance of Community: Because scholarship is a collegial, as well as an individual, enterprise, you will be asked to share your work with others at every stage: seeking (and offering) advice, and revising your work in light of the comments by your classmates and the instructor.  Your grade for the course will be based not only on the quality of you own paper, but on the quantity and usefulness of assistance that you lend to others in the course.

 

The Groups: Each of you will be placed in one of two groups.  Each group will have its own group discussion board (in addition to the entire class, discussion board).  Each week you will post your assignment for the classmates in your group.  Each week, too, you will post brief comments on the essays posted by your classmates.  To see your group assignments (and discussion boards), go to Blackboard/Groups/Group Pages/Group 1 or 2/Group Discussion Board.  To post your essay, click on the Assignment and then on "Add a New Thread."  To comment on a classmate's essay, click on the "reply" button.

 

For photos of the class, click on: class photos.

 

Blackboard: The power of the traditional seminar rests in its interactivity, on the ability of a small group of people to read and comment on one another's work.  Blackboard, the University’s “course management software,” provides a wonderful means of enhancing the seminar's interactivity by "virtually" expanding the seminar beyond the limited time and physical space in which it "actually" meets. In geek speak, we refer to these latter characteristics as "asynchronous" and "aspatial."  Blackboard provides a virtual classroom environment where you may find a link to this syllabus and other course materials, including readings available via the Library's Electronic Reserve. Blackboard also provides "discussion forums" in which you will be required to post your weekly assignments and comment on the work of your classmates.  To access the newest version of Blackboard, click on http://blackboard.american.edu/.  Login, your Eaglenet ID and Password.  Click on History 744.002.  To learn more about Blackboard, click on: http://www.american.edu/cte-consulting/blackboard.htm.  Note: To access materials on Electronic Reserve, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 or higher installed on your computers.  You can download this version of Adobe Acrobat free at www.adobe.com or https://my.american.edu/.

The Schedule:

Wednesday, August 31.  Introduction to the Course.

Assignment One:

The Questionnaire:  You should have received by now an e-mail attachment with a questionnaire.  Please fill out this questionnaire and return it to me by e-mail in advance of our first class. If you have not received a copy, please download the questionnaire (click here), fill it out and return it to me as soon as possible.

Your Blackboard Homepage: Create a class "homepage" for yourself  by going to Blackboard, entering your Eaglenet ID and Pass Word, and clicking on "Tools" and then on "Homepage."   By all means attach a photo or link to your own webpage (if you have one).

 

The Autobiography:  Also in advance of Monday's class, I would like for each of you to prepare a brief (500-750 word) "intellectual biography" in which you tell a little about yourself and your background: where you grew up, your undergraduate education, the classes (not just history classes), teachers and ideas that have really excited you during your college years, and your goals, both immediate and long term.  Post your essay on the Blackboard Discussion Board, by clicking on Discussion Board and then "Autobiography."  Add you own essay by clicking on "Add a New Thread."   You may paste your essay into Blackboard's dialogue box from Word or whatever word processing software you use; or you may attach it using Blackboard's file attachment feature.  Review what your fellow students have written.  Come to class prepared to talk about yourself and to ask questions about others.

 Important:  Please note that this assignment is due before class meets on Wednesday, August 31.

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Wednesday, September 7. The Shape of Things.

Readings:  David Lyon, Postmodernity (2nd ed.).

Assignment Two:

Prepare a brief, 500-750 word essay discussing both "modernity" and "postmodernity."  Among the questions you might consider are these: What do we mean by each of these terms? Who are the major theorists of each?  What is the relationship between the two?  Does postmodernity constitute a distinct break from modernity, or is it simply a variant of the modernity?  Is postmodernity, assuming it does exist, a product of material circumstances (economics, politics, demography, etc.) or a product of culture, of how we see and imagine our world? 

 

Post your essays by Monday, September 5.  Read and post brief  but substantive comment on your classmates essays; following the class meeting, post any "afterthoughts" you might have regarding the readings and discussion. 

Graduate Colloquium:

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Wednesday, September 14.  On Reform, Progress and the Modern World

Readings: Michael Foucault: Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (2^nd vintage edition; Random House; 1995; originally published, 1975), Pats I and II (3-134), Part III,  (184-308).

Assignment Three:

Prepare a brief, 500-750 word essay on the readings.  Among the questions you might consider are these: In what ways does Foucault's study invert common wisdom about reform?    About progress in human history?  About the enlightenment?  What do you make of the way in which Foucault chooses to present his case?  Why might many people, including conservatives, liberals and even radicals, be distressed by the underlying themes of this work?  What is your own reaction? 

 

Post your essays by Monday, September 12.  Read and post brief but substantive comment on your classmates essays; following the class meeting, post any "afterthoughts" you might have regarding the readings and discussion. 

Graduate Colloquium:

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Wednesday, September 21.  On Nations and Nationalism

Readings: Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities

 

Assignment Four:

Prepare a brief, 500-750 word essay on the readings.  Among the questions you might consider are these: Who is Benedict Anderson and what does an anthropologist have to teach historians?  Do you know of other anthropologists whose work has powerfully influenced historical study?  What, according to Anderson, are the forces shaping modern nationalism?  How do  museums, maps and censuses reflect the emergence of a distinctly "modern" nation state?  How might you relate Anderson's study to Foucault's Discipline and Punish?  Can you think of other ways in which the concept of "imagined communities" might be used?

 

Post your essays by Monday, September 19.  Read and post brief  but substantive comment on your classmates essays; following the class meeting, post any "afterthoughts" you might have regarding the readings and discussion. 

Graduate Colloquium: The panel discussion scheduled for this evening has been rescheduled so that students may attend, if they wish, the Cindy Sheehan talk in Peter Kuznick's class.

 

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Wednesday, September 28.  Constructing the "Other"

Readings: Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 1-110, 255-352.

Assignment Five: 

Prepare a brief, 500-750 word essay on the readings.  Among the questions you might consider are these:  How did European scholars "construct" a view of the "Orient"?  In what ways their scholarship reflect then reigning views and assumptions?  In what ways did their view, once enshrined in texts, influence how that "middle east" was views by subsequent generations?  What are the implications of Said's study for how we interpret the relationships between other nations and cultures?  Of how difference is experienced (and/or "constructed") within nations.  How might you relate Said's study to Anderson's Imagined Communities.

 

Post your essays by Monday, September 26.  Read and post brief  but substantive comment on your classmates essays; following the class meeting, post any "afterthoughts" you might have regarding the readings and discussion. 

Graduate Colloquium: Hiroshima and Beyond: A Panel of Graduate Students Reflect on What They Learned.  7:15 p.m.  Battelle Tompkins Atrium.

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Wednesday, October 5.  A History of American History

Readings:  Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The Objectivity Question and the American Historical Profession (excerpts).  Read (skim) the entire book, but pay special attention to the Introduction, chapters 3, 4 & 5, 10-11, and 13-16.

Assignment Six:  Peter Novick's book is both a history of the history profession in America and a study of one of its most durable controversies.  Prepare a brief, 500-750 word essay exploring the "objectivity question," addressing issues such as: how do historians "know" the past? how do they reconstruct it?  how do they "represent" it to their various audiences? And, to paraphrase Tina Turner, what's objectivity got to do with it? 

 

Post your essays by Monday, October 3.  Read and post brief  but substantive comment on your classmates essays; following the class meeting, post any "afterthoughts" you might have regarding the readings and discussion. 

  Graduate Colloquium: Class will adjourn to the Library Classroom in the basement of Bender Library, where Senior Reference Librarian Mary Mintz will introduce us to EndNote, a powerful bibliographic program.

 

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Wednesday, October 12. The New Cultural History

Readings:  Lynn Hunt, The New Cultural History, Introduction and chapters 1-5.

 

Assignment Seven:  Prepare a brief, 500-750 word essay on the readings.  Among the questions you might consider are these:  What is meant by "the new cultural history"? Briefly discuss the principal influences (individuals, ideas, intellectual movements) shaping the new cultural history?  How does the new cultural history  differ from the "social history" that proceeded it?  What are its strengths?  It's limitations?

 

Post your essays by Monday, October 10.  Read and post brief  but substantive comment on your classmates essays; following the class meeting, post any "afterthoughts" you might have regarding the readings and discussion. 

 

Graduate Colloquium: Katharine Norris, The "New" Cultural History

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Wednesday, October 19.  Gender and History

Readings:  Joan Scott,  Gender and the Politics of History (revised edition, 1999), pp. 1-50, 93-112, 167-218.

 

Assignment Eight:  Prepare a brief, 500-750 word essay on the readings.  Among the questions you might consider are these:  How did "women's" history arise out of the cultural ferment of the 1960s and 1970s?  How did it change the subjects of historical study?  The questions historians asked?  The sources they examined?  The methodologies they employed?  Trace the evolving significance of  "gender" in historical studies?   What are the implications of this evolution?

 

Post your essays by Monday, October 17.  Read and post brief but substantive comment on your classmates essays; following the class meeting, post any "afterthoughts" you might have regarding the readings and discussion. 

 

Graduate Colloquium: Eileen Findlay, Imposing Decency.

 

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Wednesday, October 26.  Race and History

Readings: David R. Roediger, The Wages of  Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class.  See also, Matthew Pratt Guteri, "A Note on the Word White,"  American Quarterly (June 2004), 439-447, at ProQuest or Project Muse.

 

Assignment Nine:  Prepare a brief, 500-750 word essay on David Roediger's Wages of  Whiteness.  According to Roediger, what role did race play in the history of the white working class?  How did Roediger's work grow out of the social and labor history of the 1970s?  How did it differ from that body of scholarship?  What other studies have been produced in the wake of Roediger's pioneering study.

 

Post your essays by Monday, October 24.  Read and post brief  but substantive comment on your classmates essays; following the class meeting, post any "afterthoughts" you might have regarding the readings and discussion. 

 

Graduate Colloquium: Kimberly Sims,  African Americans, Italians and Reformers in NYC during the Progressive Era.

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Wednesday, November 2:  Rethinking American History in a Global Age

Readings:  Thomas Bender (ed.),  Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Introduction and chapters 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10 and 12); and David Thelen, "The Nation and Beyond: Transnational perspectives on United States history," The Journal of American History (Dec 1999), available via Proquest General  at: The Nation and Beyond.

 

Assignment Ten:  The end of the Cold War and the emergence of  "globalization" (a phenomena that, while it has deep roots in U.S. and world history, has in recent years rapidly and  dramatically reconfigured the international environment) challenged U.S. historians to rethink how they approached the study of the United States.  The readings for this week explore some of the new approaches to U.S. history that this challenge has produced.  Identify three of these approaches and prepare a brief, 500-750 word essay discussing each of them: how they differ from previous approaches, their strengths, their limitations.

 

Post your essays by Monday, October 31.  Read and post brief  but substantive comment on your classmates essays; following the class meeting, post any "afterthoughts" you might have regarding the readings and discussion. 

 

Graduate Colloquium: Michael Adas,  "Wary  Vanguard: Sources of American Attraction and Resistance to Globalization." Battelle-Tompkins Atrium, December 2, 2005, Time TBA.

 

Meeting for Graduate Students Intending to Take History 752: Research Seminar in U.S. History, Spring semester, 2006.  7:15 to 8:15 in the History Lounge

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Wednesday, November 9.  Explaining American Foreign Policy

Readings:  Michael J. Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson (eds.), Explaining American Foreign Policy, 2nd edition. 

 

Assignment Eleven:  Everyone should read carefully chapters 1-4 and should at least skim chapters 5-20.  Each member of your group should write on one of the following chapters: a) 5-6-7; b) 8-9-10; c) 11-12-13; d) 14-15-15-16; and e) 17-18-19-20.  Each of you should then prepare an essay in which you discuss the various approaches to the history of  U.S. foreign affairs described in the essays on which you have concentrated.

 

Post your essays by Monday, November 7.  Read and post brief but substantive comment on your classmates essays; following the class meeting, post any "afterthoughts" you might have regarding the readings and discussion. 

 

Graduate Colloquium: David Ekbladh, On Modernization as a Theme in American Foreign Policy.

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Wednesday, November 16.  Making History I (Producing Historical Consciousness)

Readings: Mike Wallace, Mickey Mouse History (entire book).

 

Assignment Twelve:  Mike Wallace's collection of essays offers a selective overview of four important topics: the history of museums in the United States, the portrayal of history in corporate theme parks, historic preservation and the politics of elite history-making.  Prepare a brief, 500-750 word essay in which you identify and discuss some of the major issues in Wallace's discussion of each of these topics.

 

Post your essays by Monday, November 14.  Read and post brief but substantive comment on your classmates essays; following the class meeting, post any "afterthoughts" you might have regarding the readings and discussion. 

 

Graduate Colloquium: Kathy Franz,  On Public History.

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Wednesday, November 30: Making History II (History Making in School and Community)

Readings:  Sam Wineburg,  Historical Thinking and other Unnatural Acts (chapters 1, 2, 3, 9, 10); Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of  History in American Life (Columbia, 1998), pp. 1-36, 177-208.  Electronic Reserve.

 

Assignment Thirteen: Excerpts from these two books highlight two "divides" between historians and the general public: the first occurs in high schools, where teachers struggle with students whose understanding of the past is quite different from their own; the second involves the larger public, who are deeply involved in "history making" of a sort neither recognized nor understood by academic historians.  Describe and discuss these divides in a brief, 500-750 word essay in which you identify and explore the challenges that each of these divides poses for historians.

 

Post your essays by Monday, November 7.  Read and post brief  but substantive comment on your classmates essays; following the class meeting, post any "afterthoughts" you might have regarding the readings and discussion. 

 

Graduate Colloquium: Jim Percoco,  On Teaching History and other Unnatural Acts.

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Wednesday, December 7: The Future of History?

Readings: David J. Staley, Computers, Visualization and History (M.E. Sharpe, 2003).

 

Assignment Fifteen: Thinking Outside the Writing Box.  In the final chapter of this provocative book, David Staley compares historians who practice history exclusively through the written word to "flatlanders," the denizens of a two dimensional world who cannot imagine a world of three dimensions.  (The reference is to an 1880 novella by Edwin A. Abbott.)  Staley challenges us to consider how our approach to history is similarly bounded.  Describe how Staley makes his case, citing examples from earlier chapters.  To what extent do you agree with Staley's critique?  To what extent do you disagree?

 

Post your essays by Monday, November 7.  Read and post brief  but substantive comment on your classmates essays; following the class meeting, post any "afterthoughts" you might have regarding the readings and discussion. 

 

Graduate Colloquium: Joshua Greenberg, Assistant Research Professor, George Mason University: Doing History in the Digital Age. 

 

Class to meet in Battelle Tompkins Computer Laboratory - Terrace Level (e.g. basement).

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 This Historian's Craft.

Final Paper: Write on either of the two following questions:

 

Bringing it all home.  Prepare an essay (approximately 3,000 words) in which you reflect on and synthesize what you have learned from this course (as well as from the graduate colloquia and other courses that you may have taken over the past semester).  What is it that historians do?  How do they go about doing it?  For whom do they do it? (e.g., who is their audience?)   What are the ideas, approaches, topics and themes that have driven the historical profession in the past?  What are the ideas, approaches, topics and themes that currently preoccupy historians?  Be sure to cite specific readings in illustrating your essay.   Most important, what does all of this mean for you?  Where do you locate yourself (or hope to locate yourself) within the community of historians you are joining?  Connect your reflections with the autobiography that  you wrote at the beginning of the semester, as well as the course of study you intend to pursue over the next year or so.  How, if at all, has your thinking changed as a result of what we have read and discussed? 

 

Where Do We Go From Here?    Review the reading for the semester.  Then create three (3) potential topics for a research paper, each of which grows out of a different essay or book that you have read.   Write an essay of approximately 1,000 words on each of these potential topics in which you include the following:

1. In each case, cite the specific idea(s) you have drawn from the essay or book in question and explicitly describe the connection(s) between it and the topic you are proposing to explore.
    

2. Then, using the footnotes in our readings, the WRLC online catalog, JSTOR, Proquest,  Academic Search Premier and Project Muse, identify 2-3 books or articles on topics similar to the one you are proposing to research.  Describe each and how they relate to the ideas, themes and/or approaches that you have selected to explore.
    

3. Using Archives USA, the footnotes of articles you have examined, and other sources, describe the primary sources you would use to prepare your research paper.

Please post your essays no later than Friday, December 17.

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Page last revised, November 20, 2005

Comments: bgriff@american.edu