History 390
History and Historians
Dr. Mahmood Ibrahim
Office: 94-325; x-3867
mibrahim@csupomona.edu
In 1828 Macaulay said about history that "[I]t may be laid down as a general rule, though subject to considerable qualifications and exceptions, that history begins in a novel and ends in essay." While Macaulay is considered an immanent historian, not everyone agrees with his view of history, and not only because of his teleology. Indeed, our seminar is about how history and the writing of history have changed over the centuries. As such, we will study how history and the past have been thought about and written about from the ancient world to the present. We will study also why history has changed meaning. The major goal of this course, therefore, is to familiarize students with major figures of the historian's craft from Herodotus onward. Through reading and discussion, students will learn about the forces of change which determined the development of the discipline and its requirement as well as shaped the layers of meaning that enrich history. The books assigned for this seminar are to help us achieve this task since the editors of these books selected a vast array of historians and examples of "history" and presented them to us, whether chronologically or thematically, in a very accessible manner.
These books are:
Donald R. Kelley, ed. Versions of History from Antiquity to the Enlightenment. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.
Fritz Stern, ed. The Varieties of History from Voltaire to the Present. Vintage Books, 1973
Anna Green and Kathleen Troup. The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-Century History and Theory. New York: NYU Press, 1999.
As vast as the above readings may be, they do not include history and historians from non-European societies. This view is what became known as Eurocentricism, a view that is currently challenged, especially by postcolonial history. Therefore, the readings will be supplemented by selections to cover, at least, the most well known of Chinese and Arabic historiographical traditions, Ssu-ma Chien and Ibn Khaldun, respectively.
Donald Brown, Hierarchy, History and Human Nature. Chapter 2.
Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddima. Intro to p. 32.
Iggers and Wang, Turning Points in Historiography. Chapters 3, 5 and 6
You may find these on reserve in the Library. Other relevant materials will be distributed to the class. The subject of historiography is vast and the student is encouraged to pursue their interest through the selected readings recommended by the texts or at the end of this syllabus. The following useful book is located in the Reference Room of the Library: Harry Ritter. Dictionary of Concepts in History. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986. (Call Number: D 13 R 49, 1986)
Assignments:
I. All members of the class are responsible for reading all the assignments and for participating in class discussion. Students must submit 5 short essays (4-5 pages, typed, one and a half spaces, 1 inch margin all around, 10 -12 font) on some of the assigned readings. Essays are due on Mondays for that week (see the schedule below, you choose one from week 8, 9 or 10)). These essays are expected to conform to high standards and shall be carefully constructed, as an essay should be, and edited for grammatical and other errors before being turned in. Some papers may be read in class to start discussion. Late papers cannot be accepted.
II. A class presentation on one of the readings. The student selects the assigned readings of a particular class meeting and presents the material to the class to encourage discussion of the subject. The presentation should explain the subject, its historical context, the concerns of the historiographical tradition and its characteristics, and the most important historians with quotations from their writings.
III. A final paper 7-10 pages. The student selects a method of "doing" history or a particular school's point of view. This paper should conform to a proposal format which should include the topic of your study/research, a brief explanation, a brief historigraphical sketch, an explanation of your school or framework of choice, how your topic fits within that, and the methodology of your research, sources, etc.
Assessment: The five essays will count 10% each (50 %). The final paper will count for 25% and class presentation, participation in discussion and attendance count for 25%. Students must conduct themselves in a collegial manner and must maintain the standards of Academic Integrity as set forth in the University Catalog, especially on pages 50-59. These pages may be accessed at the following site: http://www.csupomona.edu/~academic/catalog/gen_info/index.htm
Reading assignments:
1st week: Introduction; Greek Historiography (Kelley:Introduction; Hesiod, Herodotus, Thucydides, Strabo, Dionysius, Aristotle, Plutarch, Lucian.)
2nd week: Roman, Byzantine and Religious History (Kelley: Livy, Cicero, Quintilian, Sallust, Tacitus, Justinian, Procopius, Ana Comnena, Daniel, Paul, Justin, Tertullian, Eusebius, Josephus, Cassiodorus, Augustine, Orosius, Origen, Jerome, Hugh of St. Victor.)
3rd week: Medieval and Renaissance. (Kelley: Gregory, Bede, Otto, Wm of Newburgh, Grandes Chroniques, Otto, Joachim, Christine, Petrarch, Valla, Vergerio, Machiavelli; 7-Luther, Calvin, Bebel.)
4th week: Muslim and Chinese. (Readings and Reserve). essay required.
5th week: Enlightenment, Empirical, Science. (Kelly: Chambers, Voltaire, Diderot, Hume, Gibbon, Vico, Herder, Condorcet; Stern: Part I, no. 1, 2, 3 and 14; Green and Troup, no. 1.) essay required.
6th week: Historical materialism, Nationalism. (Stern, Pt I, no. 6, 7 and 9 and Part II no. 6 and 8; Green and Troup, no. 2 and 5) essay required.
7th week: Positivism, Historicism, Relativism. (Stern, Pt 1, no. 8 and Part II, no. 4, 5 and 7) essay required.
8th week: Social Science, Literature and Narrative.( Stern, Part I, no. 5 and Part II, no. 9 and 11 Green and Troup, no. 4 and 8.)
9th week: Gender and Cultural history. (Stern, Part II, no. 10 and 11; Green and Troup, nos. 7 and 10.
10th week: Post-Colonial and post-modern. (Green and Troup, nos. 11and 12)
Final paper due.
Some Recommended Works on Historiography and Philosophy of History:
Ankersmit, Frank and Hans Kellner, eds. A New Philosophy of History. U. of Chicago, 1995. (A postmodern position)
Appleby, Joyce, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob. Telling the Truth about History. W.W. Norton. 1994. Appleby, Joyce et al., eds. Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective. Routledge, 1996. (A good reader)
Bennett, Tony et al, eds. New Key Words: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Blackwell, 2005) (A very useful book to get help get you through the maze of concepts and jargon of the social sciences and humanities, especially in the wake of post-structuralism and post-modernism.)
Berkhofer, Robert F. Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse. Harvard U. Press, 1995. (A good defense—yet critical—of post-modern approaches. It has an extensive bibliography, which makes it useful as a reference book tool. Unfortunately the bibliography is contained within the endnotes. Good book for graduate students.)
Breisach, Ernst. Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. 2nd ed.; U. of Chicago Press, 1994 (Solid.).
Breisach, Ernst. On the Future of History: The Postmodernist Challenge and its Aftermath. University Press, 2003. (Solid, but maybe too difficult for undergraduates.)
Burk, Peter. History and Social Theory. Ithaca, N. Y. Cornell University Press, 1992. (an excellent discussion of the subject of theory and historiography) Carr, E. H. What is History? (a classic)
Chandler, James, Arnold I. Davidson, and Harry Harootunian. Questions of Evidence: Proof, Practice, and Persuasion across the Disciplines. U. of Chicago Press, 1994.
Chartier, Roger. On the Edge of the Cliff: History, Language, and Practice. Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1997.
Cohen, G. A. Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence. Princeton Univerity Press, 1978. Donner, Fred M. Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing (Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, No. 14). Darwin Press: Princeton, N. J., 1998
Duri, Abd al-Aziz. The Rise of Historical Writing among the Arabs. Princeton University Press: Princeton, N. J., 1983. Elton, G.R. Return to Essentials. Cambridge U. Press, 1991. (VERY hostile to postmodernism.)
Evans, Richard. J. In Defense of History. W.W. Norton, 1997. (Excellent book: while generally quite critical of postmodernism, he finds some value in it.)
Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, eds. Reconstructing History: The Emergence of a New Historical Society. Routledge, 1999. (Debates in the 1990s got so hot over the nature and direction of history that some historians formed a new society in 1998, because they believed that the American Historical Association had been taken over by advocates of a destructive postmodern historiography.)
Gabrielli, Francesco. Arab Historians of the Crusades. Dorest books, 1989. Gardiner, Patrick, ed. Theories of History. The Free Press, 1959. (A collections of articles and essays that are now classic)
Harlan, David. The Degradation of American History. U. of Chicago Press, 1997. (Wants to remove history from the social sciences and restore its place in the humanities. Postmodern.) Hirschler, Konrad. Medieval Arabic Historiography. Rutledge: London, 2007.
Hunt, Lynn, ed. The New Cultural History. U. of California Press, 1989. (During the 1980s cultural history challenged the preeminence of social history.) Jenkins, Keith. On 'What is History?' From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White. Routledge, 1995. (A wildly enthusiastic, even militant, exponent of postmodernism.) Jenkins, Keith. The Postmodern History Reader. Routledge, 1997. (A collection of essays and articles explaining and defending postmodernism) Khalidi, Tarif. Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period. Cambridge University press: Cambridge, 1994.
Kelley, Donald R. The Face of History. Yale U. Press, 1998. (Good book. A companion to the reader we are using.)
Munslow, Alun. Deconstructing History. New York and London: Routledge, 1997. (Defense of postmodernism. A good beginning book; it's clear and well-written.)
Southgate, Beverley. History: What and Why ? Routledge, 1996. (Also a goo defense of postmodernism.)
Robinson, Chase. Islamic Historiography (Themes in Islamic History). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003. Rosenthal, Franz. A History of Muslim Historiography. 2nd revised ed., E. J. Brill: Leiden, 1997. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978. ( a great book that started post-colonial studies and other critiques of western approaches to the Middle East and other non-European societies). Tosh, John, The Pursuit of History. 4th edition. Pearson/Longman, 2006. (essentially a methodology text but with good explanations and bibliography.) Wilson, Norman. History In Crisis?. 2nd Edition, Peasron: Upper Saddle Back, New Jersey, 2005 (a good overview of Historiography, especially of current issues).
Windschuttle, Keith, The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists Are Murdering Our Past. Free Press, 1997. (Professor Windschuttle is positively alarmed by the appearance of postmodern historiography. He seems to think it may mark the end of civilization as we know it.)