SCOPE AND METHODS OF HISTORICAL STUDIES

INSTRUCTOR: COURSE NUMBER: HIST 8015

Prof. Austin Mason MEETING TIME: Mon, 1:00 – 3:30pm
943 Heller Hall LOCATION: CSOM 1-136
masona@umn.edu WEBSITE: z.umn.edu/8015
Office Hours: Wed, 1:00 – 3:00pm

COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course provides a graduate-level introduction to the study of history. Although History 8015 is a
course required of every student entering the doctoral program, the History department sets no
fixed requirements for its teaching, and it has gone through a number of different formats over the
years. What all versions of the course share in common, however, is a desire to introduce you both
to the intellectual issues at the heart of the discipline and to the methodological and practical
dimensions of becoming a professional historian.

This is not, however, a “how to” course that advocates one single, correct path. We will debate
various answers to a number of central questions: What is history? Why study history? Where has
history been and where is history today? How do historians write? For what purpose? These are
problematic questions that you will likely confront in the future and to which there are no easy
answers. Indeed, it is expected that you will answer them in different ways at different points in your
career. The purpose of this course is to help you become comfortable with history as a profession
while leading you to produce more theoretically astute and empirically sophisticated historical
scholarship.

The readings will, therefore, include important theoretical works that have influenced history writing
as well as major works of historical scholarship that demonstrate how historians’ diverse
backgrounds shape the history that they write. While some of the readings might be considered part
of a “canon” of classic works that you will encounter repeatedly throughout your career, others are
included because they are “good to think with,” no matter what your specific research focus, and
indicate the wide range of approaches that historians have taken to our increasingly interdisciplinary
field. The hope is that over the course of the semester you will broaden your understanding of the
discipline of history, while deepening your knowledge of the methods, theories, and historiographies
that will be most useful as you pursue your specialized chronological, geographical and thematic
fields.

COURSE MEETINGS

The course meets once a week for two and a half hours. The beginning of each class period will be
devoted to discussing the readings under consideration and exploring how they challenge us to think
about the problems and practices of history. The other part of each week's class will be a practicum
on the nuts and bolts of the historical profession. These sessions are designed to get you acquainted
from the start with a number of useful research tools, effective work habits and professional
resources that will help you to become a successful historian.
 READING AND WRITING REQUIREMENTS

PARTICIPATION

As a graduate colloquium, this is a reading-intensive course, and you are expected to attend every
class ready to discuss that week’s texts in detail. Your participation, including active listening and
verbal discussion, will be a crucial factor in your final grade.

PRESENTATIONS

Each week, two people will launch our discussions by each making a 5-minute presentation and
distributing a 1-page handout on that week’s readings. One person will analyze and summarize the
text’s argument and discuss the author’s conclusions, while the other will analyze the sources used to
construct that argument and discuss the historian’s process. In this way, we will begin to explore our
twin foci of theory and practice, intellectual issues and methodological concerns.

SHORT REACTION PAPERS (2-3 PAGES) IN RESPONSE TO THE WEEK’S READINGS.

Each week you will hand in a short review of that week’s readings. These should be modeled on
scholarly book reviews, both summarizing and evaluating the key arguments of the books or articles
in question. In addition, one of your main intellectual exercises in this class will be to figure out how
our common readings apply to your own specific interests. To do so, each week you will find 3-5
books or articles that address one or more of the issues raised in the reading that pertain to your
own interests and area of specialization (geographical, thematic, or chronological). This can be done
by chasing down references in the footnotes, researching relevant thematic or topical keywords, or
searching for more recent works that engage with the arguments made in the works we read
together. You will add the articles and books you find to your reference manager, export and
append the citations as a bibliography to be handed in with your response paper. We will discuss the
details of the process in class.

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

At the end of the term you will prepare a cumulative annotated bibliography of the works you have
collected all term, which introduces and briefly annotates the works you have appended to your
weekly reaction papers. You will package and correctly format the bibliography as a single document
to hand in for a grade, but the more important element is that the notes and references you use to
construct it are organized and archived in a way that will be easily accessible and useful for you in
your future career as a graduate student and beyond (i.e. NOT just listed in a Microsoft Word
document). We will disseminate these annotated bibliographies to all members of the seminar who
desire them through a shared Zotero group library and/or as compiled documents.

HISTORIOGRAPHIC REVIEW ESSAY

The second major assignment is to write a 10-page historiographic review essay on readings selected
in consultation with the professor. One of the professional obligations of historians is to evaluate the
quality of emerging work in their field of expertise and provide their colleagues with thoughtful
feedback. It is therefore essential to master the art of reviewing scholarly works in the context of
broader historiographical trends. We will learn how to do this and discuss the key elements of a
historiographic review essay in class.

2  
 GRADING

Grading in graduate school is different than in undergraduate classes. Generally, the standards are
much higher and based primarily on your cumulative, carefully proofread and revised written work.
This course is not designed to “weed out” or rank students in any way, however, and the
expectation is that you will work with the professor to develop your skills of interpretation, analysis
and clear written expression. Regular attendance, consistent participation in discussion, and the
timely completion of all reading and writing assignments constitutes satisfactory work (B+). A- and A
grades connote work that exceeds the minimum standards in organization, writing style, originality of
work or strength of argument, while a grade in the B range is a strong indication that your work
needs improvement.

GRADING BREAKDOWN:
Participation (including presentations) 40%
Weekly reaction papers and citations 30%
Historiographic Review Essay 20%
Final annotated bibliography 10%

SCHEDULE

WEEK 1 — SEPTEMBER 1 NO CLASS — LABOR DAY

WEEK 2 — SEPTEMBER 8 INTRODUCTIONS: THE UNIVERSITY AND THE HISTORIAN

Reading: Louis Menand, The Marketplace of Ideas (2010)
Ole Bjørn Rekdal, “Academic Urban Legends,” Social Studies of Science
44.4 (August 2014), 638-654
Practicum: Collecting References and Avoiding Citation Pitfalls (Zotero 101)

WEEK 3 — SEPTEMBER 15 WHAT IS HISTORY? WHERE DID IT COME FROM?

Reading: Beverley Southgate, History: What & Why? (2001)
Practicum: Introduction to the Library and its resources (Meet in Wilson S30C)

WEEK 4 — SEPTEMBER 22 THE MARXIST VIEW OF HISTORY

Reading: Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)
Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Revolution (1962)
EP Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd” Past & Present
(1971)
Practicum: Keeping your life organized: Note taking, writing strategies and tech tools

3  
WEEK 5 — SEPTEMBER 29 SCALES OF HISTORICAL ANALYSIS 1: MACRO
THE ANNALES, THE LONGUE DURÉE AND DEEP HISTORY
Reading: Marc Bloch, French Rural History (1931/1966)
Fernand Braudel, “History and the Social Sciences: The Long Duration,”
American Behavioral Scientist (1960)
Daniel Lord Smail, “Beyond the Longue Durée: Human History in Deep
Time” (2012)
Practicum: Staying current with the field: Journals, alerts and news aggregators

WEEK 6 — OCTOBER 6 SCALES OF HISTORICAL ANALYSIS 1I: MICRO

DO GOOD THINGS COME IN SMALL PACKAGES?
Reading: Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms (1976)
Practicum: Reaching out: joining professional societies and attending conferences

WEEK 7 — OCTOBER 13 HISTORIANS AT WORK: ARCHIVE STORIES

Reading: Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives (1987)
Helena Pohlandt-MacCormick, “In Good Hands: Researching the Soweto
Uprising,” in Burton, ed., Archive Stories (2005)
Practicum: Visit to archives

WEEK 8 — OCTOBER 20 THE TURN TO DISCOURSE

Reading: The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (1984)
Practicum: Funding your work: how do you find and apply for funds?

WEEK 9 — OCTOBER 27 “MODERNITY” AND THE NATION

Reading: Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (1983/1991)
Carol Symes, “When We Talk about Modernity,” American Historical
Review 116.3 (2011)
Practicum: Submitting your work for publication

WEEK 10 — NOVEMBER 3 GLOBALIZATION AND THE SUBALTERN

Reading: Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe (2000/2007)
Practicum: Teaching as a scholarly activity

WEEK 11 — NOVEMBER 10 QUANTITATIVE HISTORY AND THE DIGITAL TURN

Reading: [To be chosen and announced by guest lecturer Professor J. David Hacker]
Practicum: Visit to the Minnesota Population Center

4  
WEEK 12 — NOVEMBER 17 HISTORIOGRAPHICAL TURNS AND THEORETICAL OPTIONS
Reading: A list of thinkers, writers, concepts and schools of thought not covered on this
syllabus will be given out in advance. You will each choose one and present
your findings of its main features and relevance to your work in class this week.
Practicum: Time management: Work/life balance

WEEK 13 — NOVEMBER 24 THE SPATIAL TURN

Reading: Jo Guldi, What is the Spatial Turn? & “The Spatial Turn in History”
David J. Bodenhamer, Beyond GIS: Geospatial Technologies and the Future of
History
Practicum: Intro to GIS / U-Spatial visit

WEEK 14 — DECEMBER 1 HISTORY BEYOND THE ARCHIVE: MATERIAL CULTURE

Reading: James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten (1977/1996)
Leora Auslander, “Beyond Words,” American Historical Review (2005)
Giorgio Riello, “Things that Shape History: Material Culture and
Historical Narratives,” in Karen Harvey, History and Material Culture: A
Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (2009)
Practicum: Museum visit

WEEK 15 — DECEMBER 8 HISTORY BEYOND THE ACADEMY: PUBLIC AND POPULAR HISTORY
Annotated Bibliography Due
Reading: Forum on “History After the Enola Gay Controversy” Journal of American
History 82.3 (1995)
Robert A. Rosenstone, Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to our Idea
of History (1995)
Practicum: Paper revision workshop

DECEMBER 13 Historiographic Review Essay Due

5