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THE HISTORICAL
PROFESSION #1: My goal for this class is to give you a (very brief) history of the development of the historical profession and the ways it has been influenced by other disciplines and interdisciplinary movements. The Appleby book will get you started; to bring you up to the present, I've assigned two essays that will introduce you to recent discussions of "narratives" and "nations" in history research and writing. These readings give you your first chance to develop a skill every historian needs: the ability to pick up the general outlines of a scholarly conversation without necessarily being an expert in (or advocate of) a particular school of thought. Pay close attention to the ways each historian defines and characterizes each school of thought, and read the footnotes closely, looking for names that may be familiar to you; search for other clues that may help you find your footing. The final essay, which is available only online, will help you see how working historians talk about their profession. Reading Assignment: Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History. Norton, 1994. "Interchange:
The Practice of History," Journal of American History, 90
(September 2003) (UO Electronic Journal) Suggestions for Further Reading: Sara Maza, "Stories in History: Cultural Narratives in Recent Works in European History," American Historical Review 101 (December 1996): 1493-1515.. David P. Thelen, "Making History and Making the United States." Journal of American Studies [Great Britain] 32 (1998): 373-397. (Electronic Journal). Rodolfo Acuna, et. al., Why Become a Historian? http://www.theaha.org/pubs/why/blackeyintro.htm *Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge University Press, 1996. *David P. Thelen and Roy Rosenzweig, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life. Columbia University Press, 1998. *Kerwin Klein, Frontiers of Historical Imagination: Narrating the European Conquest of Native America, 1890-1990. University of California Press, 1997. "Special Issue: The Challenge of American History." Reviews in American History 26 (March 1998). Eric Foner, ed., The New American History. Temple University Press, 1997. Stanley I. Kutler, ed., American Retrospectives: Historians on Historians. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Paul Buhle, History and the New Left: Madison, Wisconsin, 1950-1970. Temple University Press, 1990. Joan Wallach Scott, ed., Feminism and History. Oxford University Press, 1996. Jeffrey Cox and Shelton Stromquist, eds., Contesting the Master Narrative: Essays in Social History. University of Iowa Press, 1998. Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears, eds., The Power of Culture: Critical Essays in American History. University of Chicago Press, 1993. Aletta Biersack and Lynn Avery Hunt, eds., The New Cultural History: Essays. University of California Press, 1989. Alfred W. Crosby, "The Past and Present of Environmental History." American Historical Review 100 (October 1995): 1177-1189. Earl Lewis, "To Turn as on a Pivot: Writing African Americans into a History of Overlapping Diasporas." American Historical Review 100 (June 1995): 765-789. Michael Geyer and Charles Bright, "World History in a Global Age." American Historical Review 100 (October 1995): 1015-1033. John Tosh, Historians on History : An Anthology. Longman, 2000. Arif Dirlik, "The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism." In Anne McClintock et al, eds., Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives, pp. 501-528. University of Minnesota Press, 1997. David P. Thelen. "The Nation and Beyond: Transnational Perspectives on United States History." Journal of American History 86 (1999): 965-975. David P. Thelen. "Rethinking History and the Nation-State: Mexico and the United States." Journal of American History 86 (1999): 439-452. Ian Tyrrell, "Making Nations/Making States: American Historians in the Context of Empire." Journal of American History 86 (1999): 1015-1044. Harry Harootunian, History's Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice, and the Question of Everyday Life. University of California Press, 2000. Prasenjit Duara, “Why Is History Antitheoretical?” Modern China 24:2 (1998) : 105-120. Fay, B., P. Pomper, et al. (1998). History and Theory : Contemporary Readings. Malden, Mass., Blackwell. *Bonnie G. Smith, The Gender of History : Men, Women, and Historical Practice. Harvard University Press, 1998. |