NYU Fall 2022
Methods & Approaches to History
HIST-GA 2168
4:55 PM – 7:40 PM Th
King Juan Carlos Center, Rm 701
David Ludden. KJCC 526, office hours Wed 12-2 & by appt
This course introduces students to problems of historical research and writing, to the NYU Department of History, and to trends in the worldwide historical profession. We organize readings and discussions around academic, cultural, and political problems that stimulate historical theory, debate, research, and teaching: among these problems are ethnicity, heritage, race, gender, nation, empire, inequity, technology, environment, and globalization. Students are encouraged to bring problems that preoccupy them into the syllabus. Our goal is to expand historical literacy, to read and discuss unfamiliar work, and to reflect on a range of questions and approaches that may inform student research and writing.
Students in the History MA program are diverse and in various professional transitions into many fields and occupations where History is relevant. The relevance of History for dealing with a wide range of pressing problems in our world — as we demonstrate in our department’s History in the Headlines course — is a major subject of concern in this course.
MA Approaches Class Folder
Readings
Weeks
1. Sept 1. History in the Present and Public History
James H Sweet, “Is History History? Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present” from the AHA president in AHA Perspectives on History, April 17, 2022
American Historical Association president issues groveling apology after racialist social media attack
JC Kang, NYT OpEd, 26 Aug 2022. Bret Stevens NYT OpEd Aug 31, 2022
The OpEd project.
Lynn Hunt, “Against Presentism,” from the AHA president in AHA Perspectives on History, May 1, 2002.
A pithy statement from William Appleman Williams
Joan W. Scott, “History in Crisis: The Others’ Side of the Story,” The American Historical Review, 94, 3, 1989, 680-692.
Hall Brands and Francis J. Gavin, “THE HISTORICAL PROFESSION IS COMMITTING SLOW-MOTION SUICIDE.”
History for The Public: Introduction to Public History, and Approaches to Public History
Some other things to think with:
Shah Mahmoud Hanifi,”Deciphering the History of Modern Afghanistan,” in the OUP Online Research Encyclopedia of Asian History.
Historical Understanding : Past, Present, and Future, edited by Zoltán Boldizsár Simon and Lars Deile, Bloomsbury, 2022. Introduction by Zoltán Boldizsár Simon, “On the simultaneous crisis and abundance of History,” pp.1-12.
Wilhelm Dilthey, Wilhelm. Descriptive Psychology and Historical Understanding, Springer Netherlands, 1978. ProQuest Ebook Central,
David Carr, Experience and History : Phenomenological Perspectives on the Historical World, Oxford University Press, 2014.
2. Sept 8. Themes, Politics, and Relevance.
Sorry I have to cancel class today. Please read as much of the above as possible; also get a start on the politics of gender and race in history with readings below; and put a list of key readings for your research field into your folder, with a text of any length explaining how your work fits into the THEMATIC areas described in the MA Handbook:
* Women & Gender
* Society, Economics, & Politics
* Culture & Ideas
* Science, Environment, Technology, & Health (SETH)
* Race & Migration
* Teacher Certification
Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, Columbia University Press, 2018.
The 1619 Project : A New Origin Story, edited by Caitlin Roper, et al., Random House Publishing Group, 2021.
Peter W. Wood. 1620 : A Critical Response to the 1619 Project. New York: Encounter Books. 2020 .
M. Eze, The Politics of History in Contemporary Africa, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
3. Sept 15. Comparisons and Connectivity
This week we will attend and discuss Robert Kramm’s presentation of his research on “radical communities” in Jamaica, Japan, and South Africa in the early 20th century. We meet for the presentation in the KJCC auditorium at 5pm and then meet in KJCC 701 for discussion at 7pm.
4. Sept 22. Is the most “relevant” history national history?
Let’s work on two things today: (1) a discussion of “thematic fields” in the Handbook, and how your work fits into them (as indicated for Sept 8), and (2) the “problem” — or is it? — of “Methodological Nationalism,” for which, please read the texts below. The big question: How we define our “fields” and establish the relevance/importance of our work .
Read:
Nicole Hannah-Jones preface to the 1619 volume.
Daniel Little: Understanding Society blogspot, on “Methodological Nationalism.”
George Vasilev, “Methodological nationalism and the politics of history-writing: how imaginary scholarship perpetuates the nation,” in Nations and Nationalism, 25, 2, 2018, 499-522.
Michael Goebel, “After empire must come the nation?” in Afro-Asian Visions, Sept 8, 2016.
Check this out: “History in the Headlines” — NYU course, UGA Press book series .
5. Sept 29. Gender and still more on the (national) politics of history —
Please read for discussion: Clyde Plumauzille, “Joan Scott’s Critical History of Inequality,” and Joan Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American Historical Review, 91, 5, 1986, 1053-1075.
Hot off the press: Arjun Appadurai in The Chronicle of Higher Education Series, “The Present and the Past.” Please read as much as possible in this series: Sam Fallon, “The Rise of the Pedantic Professor,” Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, “Beyond the End of History,” Priya Satia, “Why Do We Think Learning About History Can Make Us Better?” Vanita Seth, “When Did Racism Begin?” David A. Bell, “Two Cheers for Presentism,” and Joan W. Scott, “History is Always About Politics”
6. Oct 6. Questions of Scale: in space and time.
Lenski, N., & Cameron, C. (Eds.). (2018). What Is a Slave Society? The Practice of Slavery in Global Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2018.
David Ludden, “Maps in the Mind and the Mobility of Asia,” Journal of Asian Studies, 62, 4, 2003, 1057-1078.
AHR Conversation: “How Size Matters: The Question of Scale in History,” Sebouh David Aslanian, Joyce E. Chaplin, Ann McGrath, Kristin Mann, The American Historical Review, 118, 5, 2013, 1431–1472,
7. Oct 13. Theory and History. (ref: Social Theory post)
A survey:
Stefan Berger, “Introduction” to History and Identity: How Historical Theory Shapes Historical Practice., Cambridge, 2022, pp.1-33. (PDF online)
Some examples:
William Graebner. “History and Post-Structuralism: A Primer,” American Studies, 36, 1, 1995, pp. 53-55. Hans Kellner, “Narrativity in History: Post-Structuralism,” History and Theory , 26, 4, 1987, Beiheft 26: The Representation of Historical Events (Dec., 1987), pp. 1-29.
Iris D. Ruiz, “Post-Structuralism, Historical Theory, and Critical Race Theory: A Pyramid for Critical Historical Analysis,” in In: Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 27-39.
Gyan Prakash, “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism,” The American Historical Review 99, 5, 1994, 1475-1490. (PDF Online) and “Can the Subaltern Ride?” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34, 1, 1992, 158-84) (PDF online)
8. Oct 20. Reinventing the Past: Race and Caste.
On Tradition and Modernity: “Summary of Classical Social Theory,” in Decolonize ALL The Things: The UNsettling reflections of a Decolonial Scientist
Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, Editors, The Invention of Tradition . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2012.
The Invention of Race. Transatlantic slave trade origins of modern meanings: many citations. e.g. @ National Museum of African American History and Culture.
G. Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Vanita Seth, “The Origins of Racism: A Critique of the History of Ideas,” In History and Theory, 59, 3, 343-368, in Virtual Issue on Theorizing Racism. (PDF online)
Nicholas B. Dirks. Castes of Mind : Colonialism and the Making of Modern India Princeton University Press, 2001. Part One, “The Invention of Caste,” pp.1-60. Ref Dirks, “The Invention of Caste: Civil Society in Colonial India,” The International Journal of Anthropology, No. 25, 1989,
No. 25, “Identity, Consciousness and The Past: The South Asian Scene,” pp. 42-52. (PDF online)
Isabel Wilkerson. Caste : The Origins of Our Discontents. Random House, 2020. and Arjun Appadurai, “Comparing Race to Caste Is an Interesting Idea, But There Are Crucial Differences Between Both,” The Wire, Sept 2020.
9. Oct 27. Agency, Structure, Data, and Digital History: where is the individual in History?
Kerry Brown on Xi Jinping in NYT op ed
Philip Pomper, “Historians and Individual Agency,” History and Theory, 35, 3, 1996, 281-308. (PDF online)
Big data, quantification, and the measurement of individual historical significance: “Meet the 100 Most Significant Americans of All Time.” Smithsonian Magazine, 2014.
A starter zotero library of digital history projects and datasets, collected by Jaime Simons and Emma Gillies.
The Joys of Big Data for Historians: The Macroscope
WHAT IS DIGITAL HISTORY?
Digital US History
Making LGBT NYC visible
10. Nov 3. Readings for Student Project Discussions (links to reasoning for this recommendation are in the student names). History from Below: … a new book: A People’s History of the World
Isobel. Marcus Rediker, “The Poetics of History from Below,” American Historical Association Perspectives, September 2010. She will not be here but we can still discuss this topic, based on the reading.
Lauren: Nadia Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground: Archeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002, pp. 1-43.
Dawson. Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. (read intro material and first few chapters)
Roberta Bukshtab. Miyares Ines, “From Exclusionary Covenant to Ethnic Hyperdiversity in Jackson Heights, Queens,” Geographical Review 94, no. 4 (2004): 462-483, accessed September 6, 2022.
11. Nov 10. Class dinner at Ja Moy.
12. Nov 17. Readings for Student Project Discussions (links to reasoning for this recommendation are in the student names).
Theme: Trauma
Jamie: Philippe Aries, “The Reversal of Death: Changes in Attitudes Toward Death in Western Societies,” American Quarterly, 26, 5, 1974, Special Issue: Death in America, pp. 536-560, and Gary Laderman, Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Chapter 2: Explaining the American Funeral, 1918-1963 (PDF)
Pia: Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, to p.34.
Ashley: Micah S. Muscolino, “Violence Against the People and the Land: The Environment and Refugee Migration from China’s Henan Province, 1938-1945,”Environment and History 17, 2, 2011, 291-311.
Theme: Identity. (if we can’t do all this, shift some to Dec 8)
Brett: Alejandro de la Fuente and George Reid Andrews. “The Making of a Field: Afro-Latin American Studies,” In Afro-Latin American Studies: An Introduction, edited by Alejandro de la Fuente and George Reid Andrews, 1–24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Francesca: Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road, New York, Random House, 2015.
Juliette: Bernice Shrank, “Cutting Off Your Nose to Spite Your Race: Jewish Stereotypes, Media\Images, Cultural Hybridity,” Shofar 25, 4, 2007, 18-42.
13. Dec 1. Readings for Student Project Discussions (links to reasoning for this recommendation are in the student names). American Violence.
Lila: Randall Gann,”Cowboys, Six-guns, and Horses: Manifest Destiny
and Empire in the American Western,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 32:3, 2015, 216-239.
Jeffrey Timothy Barker, “Don’t Discuss Jobs Outside This Room”: Reconsidering Military Keynsianism in the 1970’s. Chapter 8 in The Military and the Market, edited by Jennifer Mittelstadt and Mark R. Wilson, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022, p. 135-149.
Hunter: Alfred Young’s The Shoemaker and the Teaparty: memory and the American Revolution, Boston: Beacon Press, 1999, pp. 93-123.
Mark: Linda Pertusati, “The 1990 Mohawk-Oka Conflict: The Importance of Culture In Social Movement Mobilization,” Race, Gender & Class, 3, 3, 1996, pp. 89-105. (PDF) and Al Carroll, “Bringing the War Home: The American Indian Movement, Wounded Knee II, Counterinsurgency, and a New Direction for Warrior Societies.” In Medicine Bags and Dog Tags: American Indian Veterans from Colonial Times to the Second Iraq War, University of Nebraska Press, 2008, pp. 163–72.
14. Dec 8. Readings for Student Project Discussions (links to reasoning for this recommendation are in the student names)
Nzinga: Elizabeth Higginbotham, “Designing an Inclusive Curriculum: Bringing All Women into the Core.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 1/2, 1997, pp. 237–53; Linda K. Kerber, “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman’s Place: The Rhetoric of Women’s History.” The Journal of American History, 75, 1, 1988, pp. 9–39; and J.Hobson, (Ed.). The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories (1st ed.). Routledge. Chapter 10: “Finding “Fatima” among enslaved Muslim women in the antebellum United States” by Denise Spellberg (11pp)
Ayesha: Nile Green, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean 1840-1915, Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 179-234.
Wafa Asher Syeda. Veena Das. Life and Words : Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary, University of California Press, 2006, pp. 18-78.
last day of classes Wed Dec 14.
LEFT OVER:
On Social Solidarity: Durkheim, === more to come: social theory rewired.
William Beinart,. “African History and Environmental History.” African Affairs, 99, 395, 2000, 269–302. JSTOR.
Claudia Schneider, “The Japanese History Textbook Controversy in East Asian Perspective.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 617, 2008, 107–22. JSTOR.
Tyler Anbinder, City of Dreams : The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin 2016.
