Table of Contents
Study Materials
Readings
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| SES # | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction | Tilly, Charles. "How (and What) are Historians Doing?" American Behavioral Scientist (July-August 1990): 685-711. |
| 2 | Classic Problems in Periodization | Core Readings Huizinga, Johan. The Autumn of the Middle Ages. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Chapters 1, 2, 13, and 14. ISBN: 9780226359946. Glance around at some of the chapters in between as well - 10 is particularly interesting. Goldstone, Jack. Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993. pp. 349-390. ISBN: 9780520082670.Starn, Randolph. "The Early Modern Muddle." Journal of Early Modern History 6, no. 3 (2002): 296-301. Supplementary Readings Goldstone, Jack. "The Problem of the Early Modern World." Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 41, no. 3 (1998). Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roi. "History That Stands Still." In The Territory of the Historian. Vol. 2. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1979. pp. 1-27. ISBN: 9780226473277. Besserman, Lawrence, ed. The Challenge of Periodization: Old Paradigms and New Perspectives. New York, NY: Routledge, 1996. ISBN: 9780815321033.Kaminsky, Howard. "From Lateness to Waning to Crisis: the Burden of the Later Middle Ages." Journal of Early Modern History 4, no. 1 (2000): 85-125. Darling, Linda. "Rethinking Europe and the Islamic World in the Age of Exploration." Journal of Early Modern History 2, no. 3 (1998): 221-246. |
| 3 | The Annales School | Core Readings Bloch, Marc. "The Advent and Triumph of the Water Mill." In Land and Work in Medieval Europe. London: Routledge, 1967. pp. 136-68. Braudel, Fernand. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996. pp. 25-138, 246-67, 418-60, 543-70, 734-57, and 1088-1106. ISBN: 9780520203082 (vol. 1) and ISBN: 9780520203303 (vol. 2).Supplementary Readings Bloch, Marc. French Rural History. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1978. Burke, Peter. The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School, 1929 1989. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991. Stoianovitch, Traian. French Historical Method: The Annales Paradigm. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976. Fink, Carol. Marc Bloch: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Febvre, Lucien. A New Kind of History. New York: Harper and Row, 1973. (Collected writings.) Bloch, Marc. Feudal Society; The Historian's Craft. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy. Montaillou. New York: George Braziller, 1978. Journal of Modern History (1972/12). Special issue on Braudel [PCP3]. |
| 4 | Labor History: Class as a Historical Category | Core Readings Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. New York, NY: Peter Smith Publisher, 1999. ISBN: 9780844669939. Or Gordon, Andrew. The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780674271319.Supplementary Readings Perry, Elizabeth J. Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993. Keyssar, Alex. Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Montgomery, David. The Decline of the House of Labor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Gutman, Herbert. Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America. New York: Vintage Books, 1977. Hershatter, Gail. Flying Hammers, Walking Chisels: The Workers of Tianjin (China). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986. |
| 5 | Women's History: Gender as a Historical Category | Core Readings Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. The Age of Homespun. New York, NY: Vintage, 2002. ISBN: 9780679766445. And Bray, Francesca. Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997. pp. 173-273. ISBN: 9780520206854.Supplementary Readings Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife's Tale. New York: Knopf, 1991. Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850. New York: Routledge, 2003. Davis, Natalie. Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth Century Lives. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995. Pedersen, Susan. Family, Dependence and the origins of the Welfare State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Scott, Joan. Gender and the Politics of History. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1999. pp. 15-50. ISBN: 9780231118576. |
| 6 | Global and Comparative History: Economic and Environmental | Core Readings Pomeranz, Ken. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780691090108. Supplementary Readings McNeill, William. The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983. ———. Plagues and Peoples. New York: Anchor Books, 1989. Kennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Braudel, Fernand. Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800. 3 vols. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1974. ISBN: 9780061318368. (Especially look at volume 1.)Tilly, Charles. Huge Structures, Large Processes, Big Comparisons. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1984. (Reviews and critiques some of the above works.) Journal of World History. (Scan a few articles and reviews.) Wolf, Eric. Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997. Chaudhuri, K. N. Asia Before Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Reid, Anthony. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450 1680. 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1999. |
| 7 | Historical Demography | Core Readings Wrigley, and Schofield. The Population History of England, 1541-1871. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989. ISBN: 9780521356886. (Skim the methodology work in Chapters 1-5 quickly; skim slightly more carefully Chapters 6-9; and read Chapters 10-11.) And Hatcher, John. "Understanding the Population History of England, 1450-1750." In Past and Present, 180 (2003): 83-130. Supplementary Readings Wrigley, Davies, Oeppen and Schofield, eds. English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. (Includes chapters by various authors.) Lee, James Z., and Wang Feng. One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Myths and Chinsese Realities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Caldwell, John. "The Global Fertility Transition: the Need for a Unifying Theory." Population and Development Review 23, no. 4 (1997): 803-12. Saito, Osamu. "Historical Demography: Achievements and Prospects." Population Studies 50, no. 3 (1996): 537-53. McCants, Anne. Civic Charity in A Golden Age: Orphan Care in Early Modern Amsterdam. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. |
| 8 | Environmental History | Core Readings McNeill, John. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the 20th Century World. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. ISBN: 9780393321838. Supplementary Readings Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992. ———. Changes in the Land. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983. Crosby, Alfred. Ecological Imperialism. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780521837323. Worster, Donald. Rivers of Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. White, Richard. The Middle Ground. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. "A Round Table: Environmental History." Journal of American History (1990/3). |
| 9 | The 'New' Cultural History | Core Readings Kuhn, Philip. Soulstealers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780674821514. Or Hunt, Lynn. The Family Romance of the French Revolution. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780520082700.Supplementary Readings Davis, Natalie. The Return of Martin Guerre. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy. Montaillou. New York: George Braziller, 1978. Hunt, Lynn, ed. The New Cultural History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. (Especially the chapter by Alberta Bierstadt.) Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms. London: Penguin, 1992. Spence, Jonathan. The Death of Woman Wang. New York: Penguin Books, 1979. Darnton, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1985. pp. 3-107. ISBN: 9780394729275.Or Kuhn, Philip. Soulstealers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. Geertz, Clifford. "Notes on the Balinese Cockfight." In The Interpretation of Cultures. London: FontanaPress, 1993. |
| 10 | History and Fiction | Core Readings Ghosh, Amitav. In an Antique Land. New York, NY: Vintage, 1994. ISBN: 9780679727835. Or Demos, John. The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America. New York, NY: Vintage, 1995. ISBN: 9780679759614. |
| 11 | Race and Culture | Core Readings Genovese, Eugene. Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1976. pp. 1-112, 162-93, 255-79, and 588-612. ISBN: 9780394716527. And Dower, John. "Race, Language and War in Two Cultures." In Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays. New York, NY: The New Press, 1995. ISBN: 9781565842793.Supplementary Readings Field, Barbara. "Racial Ideology in American History." In Region, Race, Ideology: Festschrift for C.Vann Woodward. Edited by J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1982. pp. 143-177. ISBN: 9780195030754.White, Landeg. Magomero: Portrait of an African Village. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. |
| 12 | Nationalism(s) | Core Readings Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York, NY: Verso, 1991. ISBN: 9780860915461. And Greenblatt, Stephen. Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780226306520.Supplementary Readings Perdue, Peter. "Empire and Nation in Comparative Perspective: Frontier Administration in 18th c China." Journal of Early Modern History 5, no. 4 (2001): 271-281. Hegel, Georg. The Philosophy of History. Kitchener, Ont.: Batoche, 2001. This book makes for interesting background reading for this topic, although this book clearly marks a break from our rule of reading 20th century historians. Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-91.New York: Vintage Books, 1996. |
| 13 | Where are Historians Going? The Future of the History Profession | Look back at Charles Tilly's article, "How and What are Historians Doing", and compare it to the following: Appleby, Jacob, and Hunt. Telling the Truth About History. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1995. ISBN: 9780393312867. Supplementary Readings Articles by Theodore Hamerow, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lawrence Levine, Joan Scott, John Toews. "AHR Forum: The Old History and the New." In American Historical Review. June 1989. Novick, Peter. That Noble Dream. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780521343282. (Last chapter) Symposium on Peter Novick's book in American Historical Review: articles by Hexter, Megill, Hollinger, et. al. |