San José State University
Department of History
History 102, Historiography, Spring, 2015
Instructor:
George L. Vásquez, Ph.D.
Office Location:
DMH-217
Telephone:
(408) 924-5528
Email:
[email protected]
Office Hours:
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2 to 4 p.m. and/or by appointment
Class Days/Time:
Fridays, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Classroom:
DMH-167
Prerequisites:
Successful completion of History 100W
Units:
4 units
Course Description
Historiography constitutes the capstone course for history majors at San José State
University. Another way of phrasing this is that you cannot graduate and receive a BA in
history without taking and passing it. You may ask yourselves why all this fuss? What is the
importance of historiography and why must one spend an entire semester studying it? The
answer is very simple. One hopes to instill in our history majors a sense of what historians
have been attempting to accomplish ever since the time of Herodotus and the Persian Wars.
It was Herodotus, after all, who first admonished his readers in the fifth century B.C.:
“Remember that men are dependent on circumstances, and not circumstances on men,” thus
debunking the great man theory of history (so popular in more recent times). It was also
Herodotus who wrote in his History of the Persian Wars, “For myself, my duty is to report
all that is said; but I am not obliged to believe it all alike. . . .”
In the next fifteen weeks we will study how history has been regarded and written in Europe
and the United States since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Equal attention will be
paid to both sides of the Atlantic. Although this examination will deal with many “isms”
(liberalism, romanticism, nationalism, historicism, Marxism, modernism – just to mention a
few), the focus will be on major historiographical trends, many of which originated in
Europe and found their way to the New World – but not all. Above all, this course is an
exploration of ideas and as such knows few limits or boundaries. I hope you will enjoy this
odyssey of exploration into man’s past and its relevance to the present, for as Bernard
Bailyn of Harvard University wrote in 1982, “the essence and drama of history lie precisely
Course Name, Number, Semester, and Year
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in the active and continuous relationship between the underlying conditions that set the
boundaries of human existence and the everyday problems with which people consciously
struggle.”
And now a brief word on the methodology to be used in teaching this course. This is not a
lecture course. Rather, it will be taught as a colloquium in which the class as a whole reads
the same assignments and comes to class prepared to discuss these assignments, having
completed the corresponding section of their workbook. From time to time there will be
discussion leaders who will focus on certain readings, but -- more often – there will be a
free exchange of ideas and commentary in which all students are expected (indeed required)
to participate.
Finally, it is hoped that students will gain a new and more profound awareness of what
history is and how it has been written over the ages.
Course Goals
This course deals primarily with the nature and theory of history. It familiarizes students
with the general epistemological and methodological problems that concern all historians. It
also offers students a survey of historical writing the past and introduces them to
contemporary debates about the role of the historian and the politics of teaching history
today. At the end of the course, students should be able to:
•identify and evaluate the principal characteristics of different schools of historical writing
of the modern age;
•discuss in an intelligent fashion such topics as changing concepts of historical truth and
validity, the problem of objectivity, different senses of time, and the postmodern dilemma;
•recognize the effects of gender, class, and race on historical studies.
In addition, students will improve their oral and written communication skills through
classroom presentations, facilitation of classroom discussions based on weekly reading
assignments, and through the writing of a substantial research paper.
Student Learning Objectives
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
• identify and evaluate the principal characteristics of different schools of historical writing
of the modern age – such as, romanticism, historicism, Marxism, etc. (SLO 1)
• discuss in an intelligent fashion such topics as changing concepts of historical truth and
validity, the problem of objectivity, different senses of time, and the postmodern dilemma.
(SLO2)
• recognize the effects of gender, class, and race on historical studies. (SLO3)
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Required Texts/Readings
Textbook
Students are required to purchase:
(1) Marc Bloch’s The Historian’s Craft (Vintage Books);
(2) John Burrow’s A History of Histories. Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from
Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century (Vintage Books);
(3) the Course Reader (four volumes) prepared by your instructor; and
(4) the Course Workbook, also prepared by the instructor.
Bloch is available at the Spartan Bookstore. You must purchase Burrow through the book
store or through Amazon.com. The Course Reader and Course Workbook can only be
purchased at Maple Press, located at 481 East San Carlos Street (between Tenth & Eleventh
Streets), for cash only. These books should be purchased immediately as you will need them
for the first reading assignment due at the second class meeting.
Library Liaison (Optional)
Nyle Monday, [email protected], (408) 808-2041
Classroom Protocol
1. Classroom attendance is highly recommended, if not mandatory. Phrased differently,
attending class is the sine qua non for passing the course. Attendance will be taken at the
beginning of each class session. Students who are absent will be required to write a fivepage, typewritten paper on the subject to have been discussed in the session missed by the
student. These papers are due at the next class meeting. There will be no exceptions to this
rule. Failure to hand in these short essays in a timely manner will affect your class
participation grade.
2. Students are expected to arrive promptly to class. This means that they should be settled
in their seats by 10 a.m. when the class begins, with their cell phones and computers turned
off. Students who arrive after roll is taken will be considered absent and will be required to
write the paper mentioned above in paragraph one.
3. Oral presentations and completion/submission of papers are expected to occur according
to the schedule stated in this syllabus or in subsequent handouts. Failure to deliver the oral
presentation will result in an automatic grade of zero. The same is true in the case of a late
submission of the critical essay.
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Dropping and Adding
Students are responsible for understanding the policies and procedures about add/drops,
academic renewal, etc. Information on add/drops are available at http://info.sjsu.edu/webdbgen/narr/soc-fall/rec-324.html . Information about late drop is available at
http://www.sjsu.edu/sac/advising/latedrops/policy/ . Students should be aware of the current
deadlines and penalties for adding and dropping classes.
Assignments and Grading Policy
(1) Book Review. Students are required to write a five-to-seven-page book review of John
Burrow’s A History of Histories. A detailed set of instructions regarding this assignment will
be distributed in the classroom at the appropriate time. The book review will be worth 10%
of the course grade. It will be due at the beginning of the class hour on Oct. 23. No late
papers will be accepted.
(2) Oral Presentation. Each student is required to make one fifteen to twenty minute oral
presentation on an historian of his/her choice taken from a list prepared by the instructor.
Additionally, detailed instructions regarding the format and content of the oral presentations
will be distributed in class together with the list of historians. Presentation of these reports
will commence after the mid term exam. The oral presentation is worth 10% of the final
grade.
(3) Critical Essay. This assignment is a continuation of the oral presentation in that each
student is required to expand on his/her oral presentation by reading at least one additional
major work by his/her historian and to write in some depth about the historiographical
contributions of that historian. As in the case with the oral presentations, detailed
instructions will be distributed in the classroom at the appropriate time. Students should aim
at writing a paper of approximately 12 to 15 pages in length. Critical essays will be due at
the beginning of the class hour on Nov. 20. First drafts should be turned in three weeks
earlier. Late papers are not accepted and will not be graded. The only exception to this rule
is in case of hospitalization when accompanied by a letter signed by the attending physician.
Ignoring this policy will only result in anguish and a very low grade in the course. The
critical essay will be worth 20% of the final grade.
(4) Class Participation. Students are expected, indeed required, to come to class having
completed the reading ahead of time and be prepared to discuss the assigned reading
material. To assist students with their reading and comprehension, they are requested to
prepare answers to be found in the Course Workbook and to bring these Workbooks with
them to class religiously. Each student will, in addition, be responsible for leading a class
discussion on at least one required reading assignment. From time to time it may also be
necessary to have an announced and/or unannounced quiz on weekly reading assignments.
Class participation will account for 20% of the final grade.
(5) Examinations. There will be two examinations in this course. Both will be essay-type
exams which will consist of short answer questions, identifications of noteworthy passages
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and commentary on the same, as well as proper essay questions on specific historiographical
problems and trends. Each exam will be worth 20% of the final grade. The dates of the mid
term and final examinations will be as follows: Mid Term on March 13, Final Exam on May
15.
(6) Course Grade Calculation
Book Review
Oral Presentation
Critical Essay
Class Participation
Mid Term Exam
Final Exam
10%
10%
20%
20%
20%
20%
(Please note that there are no extra credit assignments.)
(7) Grades are calculated according to the following percentages:
A+ = 98-100
A = 94-97
A- = 90-93
B+ = 88-89
B = 84-87
B- = 80-83
C+ = 78-79
C = 74-77
C- = 70-73
D+ = 68-69
D = 64-67
D- = 60-63
(Please note any grade under 60 constitutes an F)
(8) Incompletes: A grade of “incomplete’ is given only if the student has completed in a
satisfactory manner at least two thirds of the course requirements and cannot finish the
course because of illness, an accident, or some event beyond his or her control.
(9) Extra Credit Assignments: There are no extra credit assignments in this course.
Important Dates
Mid Term Exam
Book Review
Critical Essay
Final Exam
Oct. 9
Oct. 23
Nov. 20
Dec. 11
University Policies
Academic integrity
Students should know that the University’s Academic Integrity Policy is availabe at
http://www.sa.sjsu.edu/download/judicial_affairs/Academic_Integrity_Policy_S07-2.pdf.
Your own commitment to learning, as evidenced by your enrollment at San Jose State
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University and the University’s integrity policy, require you to be honest in all your
academic course work. Faculty members are required to report all infractions to the office of
Student Conduct and Ethical Development. The website for Student Conduct and Ethical
Development is available at http://www.sa.sjsu.edu/judicial_affairs/index.html.
Instances of academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. Cheating on exams or plagiarism
(presenting the work of another as your own, or the use of another person’s ideas without
giving proper credit) will result in a failing grade and sanctions by the University. For this
class, all assignments are to be completed by the individual student unless otherwise
specified. If you would like to include in your assignment any material you have submitted,
or plan to submit for another class, please note that SJSU’s Academic Policy F06-1 requires
approval of instructors.
Campus Policy in Compliance with the American Disabilities Act
If you need course adaptations or accommodations because of a disability, or if you need to
make special arrangements in case the building must be evacuated, please make an
appointment with me as soon as possible, or see me during office hours. Presidential
Directive 97-03 requires that students with disabilities requesting accommodations must
register with the DRC (Disability Resource Center) to establish a record of their disability.
Course Workload
Success in this course is based on the expectation that students will spend, for each unit of
credit, a minimum of 45 hours over the length of the course (normally 3 hours per unit per
week with one of the hours used for lecture) for instruction or preparation/studying or course
related activities. Other course structures will have equivalent workload expectations as
described in the syllabus. (See SJSU Academic Senate Policy S12-3.)
Because this is a 4-unit course, students can expect to spend a minimum of twelve hours per
week preparing for and attending classes and completing course assignments. Careful time
management will be required to keep up with readings and assignments in an intensive
course such as this one.
For this class, students will complete in-class midterm and final examinations as well as
frequent in-class quizzes on the assigned reading, an oral presentation on the historian of
their choice, between twenty and twenty-five minutes duration, a book review of five-toseven pages in length, and a twelve-to-fifteen-page critical essay, which will be an extension
of the oral presentation. Students will also come to class having completed the workbook
questions which correspond to that class session’s historian.
Student Technology Resources (Optional)
Computer labs for student use are available in the Academic Success Center located on the
1st floor of Clark Hall and on the 2nd floor of the Student Union. Additional computer labs
may be available in your department/college. Computers are also available in the Martin
Luther King Library.
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A wide variety of audio-visual equipment is available for student checkout from Media
Services located in IRC 112. These items include digital and VHS camcorders, VHS and
Beta video players, 16 mm, slide, overhead, DVD, CD, and audiotape players, sound
systems, wireless microphones, projection screens and monitors.
Learning Assistance Resource Center (Optional)
The Learning Assistance Resource Center (LARC) is located in Room 600 in the Student
Services Center. It is designed to assist students in the development of their full academic
potential and to motivate them to become self-directed learners. The center provides support
services, such as skills assessment, individual or group tutorials, subject advising, learning
assistance, summer academic preparation and basic skills development. The LARC website
is located at http:/www.sjsu.edu/larc/.
SJSU Writing Center (Optional)
The SJSU Writing Center is located in Room 126 in Clark Hall. It is staffed by professional
instructors and upper-division or graduate-level writing specialists from each of the seven
SJSU colleges. Our writing specialists have met a rigorous GPA requirement, and they are
well trained to assist all students at all levels within all disciplines to become better writers.
The Writing Center website is located at http://www.sjsu.edu/writingcenter/about/staff//.
Peer Mentor Center (Optional)
The Peer Mentor Center is located on the 1st floor of Clark Hall in the Academic Success
Center. The Peer Mentor Center is staffed with Peer Mentors who excel in helping students
manage university life, tackling problems that range from academic challenges to
interpersonal struggles. On the road to graduation, Peer Mentors are navigators, offering
“roadside assistance” to peers who feel a bit lost or simply need help mapping out the
locations of campus resources. Peer Mentor services are free and available on a drop –in
basis, no reservation required. The Peer Mentor Center website is located at
http://www.sjsu.edu/muse/peermentor/ .
Course Name, Number, Semester, and Year
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Course Number / Title, Semester, Course Schedule
List the agenda for the semester including when and where the final exam will be held.
Indicate the schedule is subject to change with fair notice and how the notice will be
made available.
Week
Date
1
Aug. 21
2
Aug. 28
3
Sept. 4
4
Sept. 11
Topics, Readings, Assignments, Deadlines
The Classical World
“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry
expresses the universal, and history only the particular.” (Aristotle)
Reading: Burrow, “Herodotus: the Great Invasion and the Historian’s
Task”, “Thucydides: The Polis – the Use and Abuse of Power,” and
“Tacitus: Men fit to be slaves”
Enlightenment Historians: Gibbons and Voltaire
“History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies,
and misfortunes of mankind.” (Edward Gibbon)
“History is a pack of lies we play on the dead.” (Voltaire)
Reading:
Burrow, “Gibbon: Rome, Barbarism and Civilization”
Bloch, “The Historian’s Craft”
*Carr: “History as Progress”
*Elton: “The Present Debate”
Evans: “Objectivity and its Limits”
Macaulay and British Whig Historians
“To be a really great historian is perhaps the rarest of intellectual
distinctions.” (Macaulay/Edinburgh Review)
Reading:
Macaulay: “The New Reign,” “The Summing Up” and “History &
Literature”
*Gay: “Macaulay. Intellectual Voluptuary”
*Geyl: “Macaulay in His Essays”
Hamburger: “The Political Teaching of the History”
Burrow, “Macaulay: The Glorious Revolution”
Ranke and German Historicism
“To history has been attributed the function to judge the past, to
instruct ourselves for the future.” (Ranke, History of the Romanic
and Germanic Peoples)
Reading:
Ranke: “History of the Reformation in Germany” & “The Idealof
Universal History”
*Gooch: “Ranke”
*Iggers: “The Theoretical Foundations of German Historicism II:
Leopold von Ranke”
Course Name, Number, Semester, and Year
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Week
Date
5
Sept. 18
6
Sept. 25
7
Oct. 2
8
Oct. 9
Topics, Readings, Assignments, Deadlines
Butterfield: “Ranke and the Conception of ‘General History’”
Gay: “Ranke. The Respectful Critic”
Burrow, “A Professional Consensus: The German Influence”
Marxist Historiography, I (Marx and Engels)
“History is the judge; -- its executioner, the proletarian.” (Karl
Marx, “Speech to the English Chartists”, 1856)
Reading:
Marx: “The Materialist Conception of History,” “The Inevitable
Victory of the Proletariat” and “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte”
*Hobsbawm: “What Do Historians Owe to Karl Marx? And “Marx
and History”
*Trevor-Roper: “Karl Marx and the Study of History”
Burrow: “Marxism: The Last Grand Narrative?”
Marxist Historiography, II (Hobsbawm and the English Marxist
Historians)
“. . . history is the raw material for nationalist or ethnic or
fundamentalist ideologies, as poppies are the raw material for heroin
addition.” (Eric Hobsbawm, “Outside and Inside History”)
Reading:
Hobsbawm: “From Social History to the History of Society,” “On
History from Below,” and “The Present as History:
*Iggers: “Marxism and Modern Social History”
*Kaye, Harvey J. “Eric Hobsbawm on Workers, Peasants and World
History”
Burrow: “Suppressed Identities and Global Perspectives: World
History and Micro-History”
Parkman and U.S. Nationalist Historians
“Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a
research, into special facts. . . . The narrator must . . . himself be, as
it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.” (Francis
Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World)
Reading:
Parkman: “1700-1713. Even o War,” “1745-1755. The
Combatants,” “1763-1884, Conclusion,” “1766-1769. Death of
Pontiac,” and “The Ogillallah Village”
*Taylor, “Francis Parkman”
Doughty: “Pontiac and History: The Fabric of Style” and “Pontiac
and History: The Fabric of Structure”
Burrow: “Outposts in the Wilderness: Parkman’s History of the
Great West”
Adams and Scientific History
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Week
Date
9
Oct. 16
10
Oct. 23
11
Oct. 30
Topics, Readings, Assignments, Deadlines
“Historians and students should have no sympathies or antipathies.”
(Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams)
Reading:
Adams: “American ideals,” “American Character 1817,” “The
Tendency of History” and “A Letter to the American Teachers of
History”
*Levenson: “Henry Adams”
Bishop: “The History
Jordy: “Two Temperaments in History: Scientific and Literary”
Burrow: “Henry Adams: From Republic to Nation”
Mid Term Exam
U.S. Progressive Historians: Turner
“There is objective history and subjective history. Objective history
applies to the events themselves; subjective history is man’s
conception of these events.” (Frederick Jackson Turner, The
Significance of History)
Reading:
Turner: “The Significance of History” and “The Significance of the
Frontier in American History”
*Hofstadter: “The Frontier as an Explanation”
*Lamar: “Frederick Jackson Turner”
Cronon: “Turner’s Stand: The Significance of Significance in
American History”
Ridge: “The Life of an Idea: The Significance of Frederick Jackson
Turner’s Frontier Thesis”
U.S. Progressive Historians: Beard
“The historian who writes history therefore, consciously or
unconsciously performs an act of faith. . . . His faith is at bottom a
conviction that something true can be known about the movement of
history and his conviction is a subjective decision, not a purely
objective discovery.” (Charles A. Beard, “Introduction” to The Law
of Civilization and Decay by Brooks Adams)
Reading:
Beard: “Historical Interpretation in the United States,” “A Survey of
Economic Interests in 1787,” “The Economic Conflict Over
Ratification as Viewed by Contemporaries,” “The Rise of American
Civilization” and “That Noble Dream”
*Breisach: “Beard’s Economic Interpretation of History”
*Hofstadter: “The Constitution as an Economic Document”
*McDonald: Charles A. Beard”
Book Review Due
Hofstadter and U.S. Consensus Historiography
“History deals with change, and in change conflict is a necessary,
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Week
Date
12
Nov. 6
13
Nov. 13
14
Nov. 20
Topics, Readings, Assignments, Deadlines
and indeed a functional, ingredient.” (Richard Hofstadter, The
Progressive Historians)
Reading:
Hofstadter: “The Age of Reform” “Conflict and Consensus in
American History” and “History and the Social Sciences”
*Foner: “The Education of Richard Hofstadter”
Schlesinger: “Richard Hofstadter”
The Annales, I (Bloch and Febvre)
“Explorers of the past are never quite free. The past is their tyrant”
(Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft)
“A historian is not one who knows, he is one who seeks” & “History
is the daughter of time.” Lucien Febvre, The Problem of Unbelief in
the Sixteenth Century)
Reading:
Bloch: “Introduction,” “The Nobles as a de facto Class,” “The Life
of the Nobility,” “Chivalry,” “The transformation of the Nobility into
a Legal Class,” “Feudalism as a Type of Society” and “The
persistence of European Feudalism”
Febvre: “The Silhouette of a Civilization”
*Burke: “The Founders: Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch”
Dosse: “The Era of Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre”
Burrow: “Structures: Cultural History and the Annales School”
The Annales, II (Braudel and Beyond)
“A historian never judges. He is not God. The power the historian
has is to make the dead live. It is a triumph over death.” (Fernand
Braudel, quoted in Time, May 23, 1977) and “History may be divided
into three movements: what moves rapidly, what moves slowly and
what appears not to move at all.” (Fernand Braudel, quoted in the
New York Times, June 14, 1976)
Reading:
Braudel: “History and the Social Sciences. The Longue Durée” and
“The History of Civilizations. The Past Explains the Present”
Furet: “From Narrative History to Problem-Oriented History”
Le Goff: “Is Politics Still the Backbone of History?”
*Burke: “The Age of Braudel” and “The Third Generation”
Dosse: “The Braudel Years. The Parry. The Paradigm”
Book Review Due
Historiography in the Post-Modern Age
“Once there was a single narrative of national history that most
Americans accepted as part of their heritage. Now there is an
increasing emphasis on the diversity of ethnic, racial and gender
experience and a deep skepticism about whether the narrative of
America’s achievements comprises anything more than a self-
Course Name, Number, Semester, and Year
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Week
Date
15
Dec. 4
Final
Exam
Dec. 11
Topics, Readings, Assignments, Deadlines
congratulatory story masking the power of elites. History has been
shaken right down to its scientific and cultural foundations at the
very time that those foundations themselves are being contested.”
(Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, & Margaret Jacob, Telling the truth
about history)
Reading:
Fukuyama: “The Last Man”
Zinn: “The Politics of History in the Era of the Cold War”
*Iggers: “History and the Challenge of Postmodernism”
*Windschuttle: “The Fall of Communism and the End of History.
From Posthistory to Postmodernism”
Critical Essay Due
Gender History
“The study of history is useful to the historian by teaching him his
ignorance of women; and the mass of this ignorance crushes one
who is familiar enough with what are called historical sources to
realize how few women have ever been known.” (Henry Adams, The
Education of Henry Adams)
Reading:
Carlson: “Feminism and the Peróns”
Caulfield: “The Birth of Mangue”
Miller: “The Suffrage Movement in Latin America”
*Gordon: “U.S. Women’s History”
*Kerber: “Gender”
*Lerner: “Women Among the professors of History: The Story of a
Process of Transformation”
Scott: “Women’s History”
DMH-167
07:15 to 09:30
*Required reading in secondary sources.
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The striking representation of Clio in the National Statuary Hall in the Capitol in Washington, D. C., by
Carlo Franzoni, called Car of History, in which Clio is shown riding in the vehicle that represents the
movement of history through the ages.
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