This course presents an advanced study of the philosophy and method of historical research, with particular attention to writing and teaching history. While intended to familiarize students with the traditions and current practice of the historical profession, the course will also acquaint students with specific problems in historical research reflected in the publications of the seminar instructor. Students will examine the development and traditions of historical scholarship, as well as contemporary historiographical challenges to traditional methodologies, including postmodernism, postcolonial and transnational critiques, and feminist studies.

Course Requirements:

All students are required to attend class meetings and take part actively in class discussions. Written work will require students to synthesize as well as analyze material. Seminar participants must also read and assimilate assigned readings, and be prepared to discuss the readings on the schedule listed below. Students will submit all assignments on time; late assignments will only be accepted by prior arrangement with the professor. Plagiarism and other forms of intellectual dishonesty or sloth will not be tolerated.

A Note About Academic Integrity: Integrity is fundamental to the academic enterprise. It is violated by acts such as borrowing or purchasing term papers, essays, reports, and other written assignments; using concealed notes or crib sheets during examinations; copying others' work and submitting it as one's own; and misappropriating the knowledge of others. The sources from which one derives one's ideas, statements, terms, and data must be fully and specifically acknowledged in the appropriate form; failure to do so, intentionally or unintentionally, constitutes plagiarism. Violations of academic integrity may result in failure in the course and in disciplinary actions with penalties such as suspension or dismissal from the College.

Contacting the Professor:

My office is in 2N 203, and my office phone is 718-982-2869; I have office hours Tuesdays from 4:00 to 6:30pm, and by appointment. You may also reach me via email at lavender@postbox.csi.cuny.edu.

Assignments:

Portfolio of Writing Assignments and Exercises (ongoing throughout the semester), including a Bibliographic Essay, Historiographical Essay, Research Plan and Proposal, Grant Proposal, and Research Report.
Class Attendance/Participation

Readings:

• Robert Jones Shafer, A Guide to Historical Method 3rd. Edition (Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1980) -- this book is out-of-print; I will be distributing photocopies.
• John Keegan, The Battle for History: Re-Fighting World War II (Vintage, 1995).

• Jonathan D. Spence, The Death of Woman Wang (New York: Penguin, 1978).

• Peter Guralnick, Searching for Robert Johnson (New York: Plume, 1989).

• David Herlihy, The Black Death and the Transformation of the West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).

• Additional articles (listed below) will be distributed as photocopies to the class.

Highly Recommended, But Not Required:

• Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Wesleyan University Press, 1997).

• Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge University Press, 1988).

• Mark T. Gilderhus, History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction 4th Edition (New York: Prentice-Hall, 2000).

T 8/28 -- Week One: Introduction to the Course

T 9/4 -- Week Two: What is History? What is Historical Method?
	Readings: • Robert Jones Shafer, "The Nature of History" and "Beginning Research," from A Guide to Historical Method 3rd. Edition (Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1980). • Robert Blackey, ed., Why Become a Historian? (New York: The American Historical Association), n.d., stored electronically at http://www.theaha.org/pubs/why/blackeyintro.htm; read essays by Rodolfo F. Acuņa, David Brody, Gordon Chang, Spencer Crew, Natalie Davis, Robert Gutierrez, Nadine Hata, Thomas Holt, Patricia Reid, James Riding In, and Isabel Tirado.
	Writing Assignment Due:    Historical Questions.

T 9/11 -- Week Three: Class cancelled due to the emergency at the World Trade Center

T 9/18--CUNY Closed; No Classes

T 9/25 -- Week Four: Weighing Stories and Evidence
	Readings: • Robert Jones Shafer, "Proof and Probability" and "Historical Evidence," from A Guide to Historical Method 3rd. Edition (Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1980). • Robert Darnton, "Peasants Tell Tales: The Meaning of Mother Goose," from The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episode in French Cultural History (New York: Vintage Press, 1984). • Wheeler & Becker, "How They Lived: Middle-Class Life, 1870-1917," and "The 'New' Woman of the 1920s: Image and Reality," in William Bruce Wheeler and Susan D. Becker, Discovering the American Past: A Look at the Evidence (Houghton Mifflin, 1994).
	Writing Assignment Due:    Making It True.

T 10/2 -- Week Five: Evidence Gathering
	Readings: • Robert Jones Shafer, "Collecting Historical Evidence," from A Guide to Historical Method 3rd. Edition (Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1980). • Mark Hellstern, Gregory M. Scott, and Stephen M. Garrison, "Conducting Historical Research," from The History Student Writer's Manual (Prentice-Hall, 1998).
	Writing Assignment Due:    Continue working on the Reference Search Log.

T 10/9 -- Classes follow Monday schedule; No class.

T 10/16 -- Week Six: Historiography, or Why Historians Disagree
	Readings: • Mark T. Gilderhus, "Professional History in Recent Times," and "Postscript: Culture Wars and Postmodernism," from History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction 4th Edition (New York: Prentice-Hall, 2000). • Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Wesleyan University Press, 1997), selections. • Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge University Press, 1988), selections. • John Keegan, The Battle for History: Re-Fighting World War II (Vintage, 1995).
	Writing Assignment Due:    Reference Search Log.

T 10/23 -- Week Seven: External and Internal Criticism
	Readings: • Robert Jones Shafer, "Using Evidence: External Criticism," "Using Evidence: Internal Criticism," and "Communications: Footnotes and Bibliography," from A Guide to Historical Method 3rd. Edition (Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1980). "Communication: Writing and Rewriting," from A Guide to Historical Method 3rd. Edition (Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1980). • Alan Trachtenberg, "Illustrious Americans," from Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (New York: Noonday, 1989). • David Lowenthal, "Changing The Past," from The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1985).
	Writing Assignment Due:    Literature Search Log.

T 10/30 -- Week Eight: Analysis
	Readings: • Robert Jones Shafer, "Analysis and Synthesis," from A Guide to Historical Method 3rd. Edition (Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1980). • Stephen W. Sears, "A Confederate Cannæ and Other Scenarios: How The Civil War Might Have Turned Out Differently," and Tom Wicker, "Vietnam in America, 1865," in Robert Cowley, ed., What If?: The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been (New York: Putnam, 1999), pp. 239-260. • James M. McPherson, "Long Remember: The Summer of '63," from Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 626-65.
	Writing Assignments Due:    Evaluating Websites.

T 11/6 -- Week Nine: Historical Literature
	Readings: • Charles S. Maier, "Marking Time: The Historiography of International Relations," in Michael Kammen, The Past Before Us (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980), pp. 355-87. • Jan Vansina, "On Wisconsin" and "The Roaring Sixties" from Living With Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994). • Charles Bergquist, "Modern Latin American Historiography and the Labor Movement," from Labor in Latin America: Comparative Essays on Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and Colombia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986).
	Writing Assignment Due:    Bibliographic Essay; and Research Plan.

T 11/13 -- Week Ten: Reconstructed Pasts
	Readings: • Peter Loewenberg, "On Psychohistory: A Statement on Method," and "The Psychohistorical Origins of the Nazi Youth Cohort," from Decoding The Past: The Psychohistorical Approach (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983). • Peter Burke, "History as Social Memory," from Varieties of Cultural History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997). • Charles Bergquist, "Colombia," from Labor in Latin America: Comparative Essays on Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and Colombia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986).
	Writing Assignment Due:    Research Proposal.

T 11/20 -- Week Eleven: Storytelling and History
	Readings: • Jonathan D. Spence, The Death of Woman Wang (New York: Penguin, 1978). • Peter Guralnick, Searching for Robert Johnson (New York: Plume, 1989).
	Writing Assignment Due:    Historiographical Essay; Continue working on Archival Research Log for next week.

T 11/27 -- Week Twelve: Philosophies of History
	Readings: • Mark T. Gilderhus, "Philosophy of History: Speculative Approaches" and "Philosophies of History: Analytical Approaches," from History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction 4th Edition (New York: Prentice-Hall, 2000). • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, selections from Introduction to the Philosophy of History (1840) (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1988). • Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (New York: Schocken Books, 1985). [See also: Lori Landay, (Assistant Professor, Berklee College of Music), Flash Movies That Illustrate These Ideas, pages.emerson.edu/Courses/spring00/in123/workofart/reprod.html]. • Terry Eagleton, "Homage to Walter Benjamin," from Walter Benjamin, or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism (London: Verson, 1981), pp. 181-84. • T.J. Jackson Lears, "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities," American Historical Review 90 (June 1985): 567-93. • Antonio Gramsci, selections from "Notes on Italian History," from Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), pp. 44-120. • Edward Said, "Introduction," to Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978), and selections from "Overlapping Territories, Intertwined Histories," from Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1993). • Joan Wallach Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis (1986)," in Joan W. Scott, ed., Feminism and History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 152-80.
	Writing Assignment Due:    Archival Research Log.

T 12/4 -- Week Thirteen: Constructionism and the Post-Modern Turn in Historical Method
	Readings: • Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (selections) • Bryan Palmer, "The Discovery/Deconstruction of the Word/Sign," in Descent into Discourse: The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990): 3-47. • Simon Schama, "The Many Deaths of General Wolfe," GRANTA: History 32 (Spring 1990): 13-56.
	Writing Assignment Due:    Revised Research Proposal.

T 12/11 -- Week Fourteen: Drawing Lessons from History
	Readings: • Joseph C. Miller, "History and Africa/Africa and History," Presidential Address before the American Historical Association, Washington, DC, 8 January 1999. • David Herlihy, The Black Death and the Transformation of the West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
	Writing Assignment Due:    Continue working on Grant Proposal for next week.

Week Fifteen (12/17): Final Papers Due
	Writing Assignment Due:    Grant Proposal.