Kenyon College

History 95
Junior Honors Seminar: Is the Past Knowable?
First Semester, 1997-98

In 1988 Peter Novick published That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession. In the last chapter, memorably entitled "There was No King in Israel," he wrote:

Taken together, the developments recounted in the last three chapters constituted a sweeping challenge to the objectivist program of the founding fathers of the historical profession. Ideological disarray replaced the consensus on which ideas of objectivity had always depended so heavily. The resurgence of particularist tendencies further undercut the objectivist vision of a convergent past. Various "postmodern" intellectual currents worked together to chip away at the philosophical foundations of the objectivist posture.

Novick's book analyzes the cumulative impact of at least five developments in American historical scholarship over the past thirty years: 1) the raising of new questions, 2) the use of new types of evidence, 3) the turn to new areas of investigation, 4) the rise of radical doubt, and 5) the attractions of a new reliance on theory. This seminar will introduce us to the world of modern historiography. The challenge I throw out to each of you is to wrestle with the ideas in the works we will read and hear about. It is likely that, just as we almost surely begin the course in disagreement about many of these issues, we will remain of divergent views when we end it. But by December I think that we shall all have known the pleasures of participating in a debate about important issues, and we shall surely be more sophisticated readers and producers of historical scholarship.

The heart of this seminar is its weekly meetings for purposes of discussion. These meetings will vary in format, sometimes involving student presentations. Nevertheless, whatever shape they take, in order to participate effectively and honestly you must be ready for discussion by having read the assigned pieces before we meet. I will ask each of you to present two oral reports during the semester. Finally, members of the seminar will also have four assigned essays:

1) a three-page paper, due September 8, in which you describe/analyze your reactions to the excerpts from Nietzsche;

2) a four-page paper, due September 29, in which you analyze the arguments of Himmelfarb's The New History and the Old;

3) a five-page paper, due October 27, in which you discuss how one of the following topics (all are important) has figured in recent historical writing:

4) an essay based on an interview that you will conduct with a historian (usually a Kenyon faculty member), probing his or her life and practice in the historical profession. This interview essay is due on November 21. I will say more about the logistics, scope, and intention of this last assignment at the appropriate time, but the model will (roughly) be the interviews to be found in Adelson, Speaking of History.

There is no final examination in the seminar.

I invite you to speak to me whenever you wish about my judgment of your work in the course. Your grade in the course will be assessed according to the following formula:

your participation in discussion 25%
your oral reports 20% (10% each)
your first three essays 30% (10% each)
your interview essay 25%

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Books to be purchased:

Roger Adelson, ed., Speaking of History: Conversations With Historians
Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History
Joyce Appleby et al., Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective
Peter Burke, ed. New Perspectives on Historical Writing
Gertrude Himmelfarb, The New History and the Old: Critical Essays and Reappraisals


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GETTING LAUNCHED

September 1 WHAT DO HISTORIANS DO WHEN THEY DO HISTORY?

We will spend this session with a preliminary sharing of views about what historians are up to when professionally engaged in studying, researching, and writing history. We will also discuss the goals and hopes that I envision for this course, as they are embedded in and represented by the syllabus, and discuss too the goals and hopes of you who have enrolled in the seminar. I will explain the four written assignments and assign the report responsibilities for the rest of the semester.

THE REVOLUTION IN HISTORIOGRAPHY

September 8 THE NIETZSCHEAN CHALLENGE

All Read:

Friedrich Nietzsche, selections from The Gay Science and Beyond Good and Evil, in Appleby, ed., Knowledge and Postmodernism, pp. 189-212.

Essay on Nietzsche due.

September 15 THE FRAGMENTATION OF THE PROJECT

All read:

Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob, Telling the Truth About History, pp. 15-90, 160-237.

Burke, "Overture: The New History, Its Past and Future," in Burke, ed., New Perspectives on Historical Writing, pp. 1-23.

Michel Foucault, "What is Enlightenment?" and selections from The History of Sexuality, in Appleby, ed., Knowledge and Postmodernism, pp. 408-34.

Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," and "Declarations of Independence," in Appleby, ed., Knowledge and Postmodernism, pp. 437-54.

Richard Rorty,

Special reports:

Jacques Lacan
Claude Levi-Strauss
Ferdinand de Saussure

September 22 THE DILEMMA OF PRESENTATION

All read:

Hayden White, "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality," in Appleby, ed., Knowledge and Postmodernism, pp. 395-407.

Hayden White, "Interpretation in History," in White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, pp. 51-80. [library reserve]

Burke, "History of Events and the Revival of Narrative," in Burke, ed. New Perspectives on Historical Writing, pp. 232-48.

Monograph report:

Richard Price, Alabi's World
Simon Schama, Citizens
Natalie Zeman Davis, Martin Guerre
Jonathon Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci

BEING HISTORIANS IN AN AGE OF CRISIS

September 29 WHAT HISTORIANS SAY ABOUT THE PROFESSION TODAY

All read:

Interviews with Walter Arnstein, Natalie Zemon Davis, John Demos, Darlene Clark Hine, Joan M. Jensen, William MacNeill, Theodore H. Von Laue, and C. Vann Woodward, in Adelson, ed., Speaking of History, pp. 1-22, 41-82, 105-42, 165-82, 223-62.

Essay on Himmelfarb due.

THE TURN TO THEORY

October 6 GENDER THEORY

All read:

Joan Scott, "Women's History," in Burke, ed., New Perspectives on Historical Writing, pp. 42-66.

Joan Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," in Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, pp. 28-52. [library reserve]

Monograph report:

John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality
Carolyn Kay Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives

October 13 RACE THEORY

All read:

Cornel West, "A Genealogy of Modern Racism," in Appleby, ed., Knowledge and Postmodernism, pp. 476-86.

David Brion Davis, "Constructing Race: A Reflection," The William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser., vol. 54, no. 1 (January 1997): 7-18. [library reserve]

October 20 CLASS THEORY

All read:

Gareth Stedman Jones, "From Historical Sociology to Theoretical History," in R. S. Neale, ed., History and Class: Essential Readings in Theory and Interpretation, pp.73-85. [library reserve]

R. S. Neale, "Afterward," in R. S. Neale, ed., History and Class: Essential Readings in Theory and Interpretation, pp. 271-307. [library reserve]

Monograph reports:

Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History
Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of Class
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class


EXAMPLES OF APPLICATIONS AND NEW INTERESTS

October 27 DECODING MEANING

All read:

Clifford Geertz, "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture," in Appleby, ed. Knowledge and Postmodernism, pp. 310-23.

Monograph reports:

Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History.
Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller.
Marshall Sahlins, How "Natives" Think, about Captain Cook, for Example.

Essay on chosen topic due

November 3 REWRITING THE BODY

All read:

Roy Porter, "History of the Body," in Burke, ed., New Perspectives on Historical Writing, 206-32.

Monograph reports:

Michael Macdonald, Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety and Healing in Seventeenth Century England.

N. Elias, The Civilizing Process.

P. Camporesi, The Incorruptible Flesh: Bodily Mutation and Mortification in Religion and Folklore

November 10 EXPLORING MEMORY

All read:

Pierre Nora, "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux des Memoires," in Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 7-25. [library reserve]

Steven Knapp, "Collective Memory and the Actual Past," Respresentations 26 (Spring 1989): 123-49. [library reserve]

Monograph reports:

Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France Since 1944.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism
Charles S. Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity.


DEALING WITH THE CRISIS

November 17 THE PRE-MODERNIST ALTERNATIVE: FOUNDATIONALISM

All read:

Christopher Dawson, "The Christian View of History," and Kenneth Scott Latourette, "The Christian Understanding of History," in C. T. McIntire, ed., God, History, and Historians: Modern Christian Views of History, pp. 28-67. [library reserve]

Leo Strauss, Natural Law and History, pp. 1-80. [library reserve]

Monograph report:

Thomas Nagel, The Last Word.

December 1 THE MODERNIST COMPROMISE: DOMAINS OF AGREEMENT

All read:

Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob, Telling the Truth about History, pp. 241-309.

Jurgen Habermas, "Philosophy as Stand-in and Interpreter," in Appleby, ed., Knowledge and Postmodernism, pp. 509-19.

December 5 - Interview paper due


WINDING UP

December 8 SHARING IDEAS AND QUESTIONS

During this last session of the seminar we will discuss what we have learned from the interview assignments and probe one another's understanding of the character of the historical project at the end of the twentieth century.


Reed Browning

Contact: Reed Browning, Department of History, BrowninR@kenyon.edu
Edited: 06-26-97
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