Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

M Phil in Social Sciences 2017-19

COURSE_____ OPTIONAL_____
Semester I: July – December 2017

Problems of Historical Writing and Method

MODULE COORDINATOR: Rajarshi Ghose

MODULE INSTRUCTORS: Lakshmi Subramanian, Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Prachi
Deshpande, and Rajarshi Ghose
With a special lecture by Gautam Bhadra

Course Description:

This course is divided into two complementary parts with two distinct aims. On one
hand, the course critically engages with some of the key conceptual and methodological
issues concerning the nature of the historical discipline and its modes of writing and
enquiry. It examines the emergence of history as a mode of thought and practice,
juxtaposing the pre-modern with the modern. It begins with an exploration of pre-modern
representations of the past, and then moves on to discuss certain major formative
moments in the life of the modern historical discipline. It goes on to focus on various
critiques of historical knowledge and the reconfiguring effects they have had on the
discipline.
On the other hand, this course seeks to initiate a conversation on the state of
contemporary historiography through engaged discussions of some of the influential
thematic interventions that have happened within the discipline in the past few decades.
Here, it departs from the more usual practice of understanding the state of discipline in
terms of the evolution of the various ideological and methodological schools of history-
writing. Rather, it identifies for in-depth study some of the most topical themes of
contemporary research and a few energized disciplinary sub-fields which have been
conceptualized, critiqued, and researched by historians from across the ideological
spectrum in the recent past. By doing so, it seeks to understand how the contemporary
impacts the processes of historiographical knowledge formation, how political events and
social movements inflect or transform the research agenda of historians, and how
intellectual struggles enable historians from across the spectrum to reconceptualise the
question of the archive. Mapping the evolution of these particular themes of historical
research and situating the emergence of specific disciplinary sub-fields in the broader
register of social transformation, this course not only seeks to learn from the creative
strategies of cutting edge scholarship but also tries to thematize the politics of the
professional historiography itself.

TENTATIVE ROUTINE

Tuesday Friday Lecture Topic Instructor

Early-modern History-writing: Europe RG
18 July 21 July

1
 Early-modern History-writing: China and RG
25 July 28 July
Japan
1 August 4 August Making of a Discipline: Ranke and Hegel RG
The Historian’s Craft: Marc Bloch RG
8 August 11 August
The Idea of History: R.G. Collingwood
New Cultural Histories of Performance in LS
16 August* 18 August
South Asia
New Cultural Histories of Performance in LS
22 August 25 August
South Asia
1 The Annales School and History-writing of LS
29 August
September Maritime Asia and of the Pacific
8 Microhistory PD
5 September
September
12 15 Archaeology / Genealogy PD
September September
20 22 History and Narrative PD
September* September
Intellectual History: RG
10 October 13 October
Quentin Skinner and Reinhart Koselleck
Introduction to the fields of art and object TGT
17 October 20 October
histories
24 October 27 October Introduction to the fields of art and object TGT
histories
31 October 3 November Introduction to the fields of art and object TGT
histories
7 November - Sanskrit Historiography and Hermeneutics GB
* These dates fall on Wednesday
# All classes with RG will begin at 1430 hours instead of the usual 1030 hours.

1 September, 2017: Tentative date of circulating the Questions for the First (Mid-term)
Internal Assignment
17 September, 2017: Tentative date of Submission of the First (Mid-term) Internal
Assignment
19 November 2017: Tentative date of Submission of the Second (End-term) Internal
Assignment
Mid-December: End-Semester I Examination

TENTATIVE SYLLABUS

Lectures 1-2: Early-modern History-writing: Europe (18-21July) [RG]

Readings:
Anthony Grafton, What was History The Art of History in Early modern Europe (2007)
Constantine Fasolt, The Limits of History (Chicago, 2003)

Lectures 3-4: Early-modern History-writing: China and Japan (25-28 July) [RG]

2
Readings:
Harry Harootunian, Things Seen and Unseen: Discourse and Ideology in Tokugawa
Nativism (1988)
Pamela Crossley, A Translucent Mirror History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology
(2002)

Lectures 5-6: Making of a Discipline: Ranke and Hegel (1-4 August) [RG]
Readings:
Leopold von Ranke, Theory and Practice of History (New York: Routledge, 2011).
Hegel, Philosophy of History (New York: Dover Press, 1956).

Lecture 7: The Historian’s Craft (8 August) [RG]

Readings:
Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft (1953)

Lecture 8: The Idea of History (11 August) [RG]

Readings:
R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (1994)

Lectures 9-12: Writing music histories in south Asia: experiments with new
Cultural histories (16-25 August) [LS]

This section proposes to look at new and emerging work on music and performance
practices in South Asia both as an expression of new directions in historical method as
well as of their relevance as a lens to the investigation of complex social formations like
caste and gender.

Readings:
First week (16-18 August)
“Introduction” in New Cultural Histories of India edited by Chatterjee, Guha-Thakurta
and Kar (O.U.P. Delhi, 2014)
Janaki Bakhle, Two Men and Music Nationalism in the making of an Indian classical
tradition (O.U.P. 2005)
Amanda Weidman, Singing the Classical Voicing the modern The Post colonial politics
of music in South India (Duke Univesrity Press, 2000)

Second week (22-25 August)

Lakshmi Subramanian, “A language for music Revisiting the Tamil Isai Iyakkam”,
IESHR (2007)
Max Kastz, “Institutional Communalism in North Indian Classical Music”,
Ethnomusicology, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Spring/Summer 2012), pp. 279-298
Peter Manuel, “The Cassette Industry and Popular Music in North India”, Popular Music,
Vol. 10 No.2, 1991
Sanjay Srivastava, “Voice, Gender and Space in Time of Five-Year Plans: The Idea of
Lata Mangeshkar” (see link http://cscs.res.in/dataarchive/textfiles/textfile.2010-08-
05.5868152736/file)

3
Lecture 13-14: The Annales School and History-writing of Maritime Asia and of the
Pacific (29 August – 1 September) [LS]
Readings:
Marcus Vink, “The Indian Ocean and the new thallasology”, Journal of Global History,
(2) 2007, (41-62)
M. N. Pearson, The Indian Ocean (select chapters and “Introduction”)
Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean, Vol. 1 (select chapters)
Greg Dening, Islands and Beaches Discourse on a silent land Marquesas 1774-1880
(University of Hawai Press, 1980)

Lecture 14-15: Microhistory (5-8 Sep) [PD]

Readings:
5 Sep: Carlo Ginzburg, "Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm", from Clues, Myths,
and the Historical Method,1989 (Chapter 5)

8 Sep: Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre, 1983 (read whole)
Shahid Amin, "Gandhi as Mahatma", in Ranajit Guha, ed. Subaltern Studies III, 1984
(chapter I)

Lecture 16-17: Archaeology/Genealogy (12-15 Sep) [PD]

Readings:
12 Sep:
Michel Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, 1969/2004 (Introduction, Parts III & IV)

15 Sep:
Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge, 1996 (Chapter 2, pp.16-56)
David Ludden, "Orientalist Empiricism: Transformations of Colonial Knowledge" in
Carol Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer eds, Orientalism and the Postcolonial
Predicament, 1993, (pp. 250-278)

Lecture 18-19: History and Narrative (20-22 Sep) [PD]

Readings:
Sep 20:
W.H. Dray, "On the Nature and Role of Narrative in Historiography", History and
Theory Vol. 10, No. 2 (1971), pp. 153-171
Hayden White, "The Historical Text as Literary Artifact", Tropics of Discourse, 1986,
(Chapter 3)
David Carr, “Narrative Explanation and its Malcontents”, History and Theory, Vol. 47,
No. 1 (Feb., 2008), pp. 19-30

Sep 22:
Partha Chatterjee, A Princely Impostor: The Kumar of Bhawal and the Secret History of
Indian Nationalism, 2002 (read whole)

4
Lecture 20-21: Intellectual History: Quentin Skinner and Reinhart Koselleck (10-13
October) [RG]
Readings:
Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas”, History and
Theory, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1969), pp. 3-53
Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996)
Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History Timing History, Spacing
Concepts (2002)

Lectures 22-27: Histories of Art and Object Worlds (17October-3 November) [TGT]

17 October
Introductory Lecture: Introduction to the fields of art and object histories

Readings:
20 October
T.J.Clark, The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers
(Reprint, Princeton University Press, 2015)

24 October
Rebecca Brown, Art for a Modern India, 1947 -1980 (Duke University Press, 2009)

27 October
Richard Davis, Lives of Indian Images (Princeton University Press, 1997)

31 October
Asa Briggs, Victorian Things (Penguin Books, 1988)

3 November
David Arnold, Everyday Technologies Machines and the making of India's Modernity
(University of Chicago Press, 2013)

Lecture 28: Sanskrit Historiography and Hermeneutics (7 November) [GB]

Readings:
TBA

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