Many high school students have perceived history as being a repetitious and oftentimes dreary array of facts, figures and events that have little relevance to their lives. This course will consider the important question of exactly WHAT is history? What relationship does it have to culture, society, politics--myth, memory, tradition, remembrance, commemoration? How do people view their past and why?

We will examine what historians have written and how the relationship of power and culture informs their histories. Focusing on diverse areas of the world during the age of modernity, we will critique histories of social change that reflect on contradictory periods of upheaval and turbulence; what factors are important to how historians conceive those times; and how they relate to political and economic concerns prevalent to when the histories were/are written.

Three short essays, a research proposal, and a final research paper will be required of all students. In addition, they are responsible to keep up with the readings and expected to participate actively in class discussions. Final papers are due on December 12th. Evaluations for the course will be given only to students who complete ALL assignments.

Required Course Materials

The following books are available at the Hampshire College Bookstore:

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (NY: Penguin, 1999; first published, 1902).

Additional readings for the course are available at Paradise Copies (in downtown Northampton) as a packet. Readings marked with an asterisk (*) in the Syllabus are in this packet.

Aids for Writing Papers:
Kate Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses and Dissertations, 6th ed., (Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press,1996); or,
Joseph Gibaldi, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 4th ed., (New York: MLA, 1995).

Important Deadlines

First essay due on Sept. 10
Second essay due on Oct. 1
Third essay due on Oct. 15
Paper proposal due on Oct. 29
Final paper due (in class) on Dec. 12

Introduction

Sept 5
Statement on history distributed by Hampshire Admissions Office (to be handed out in class).

Sept. 10
First writing assignment due today:
Please submit a 3-5 page essay on your views of history. How do you define "history"; what has been your experience up to now; what have you retained; what do you want to gain from this course?
We will break up in small groups to discuss your essays after which, at the end of the period, each group will report and the whole class will sum up.

Sept. 12
*James W. Loewen, "Why is History Taught Like This?" Lies My Teacher Told Me (1995).

Sept.17
*Richard J. Evans, "The History of History," In Defense of History (1997) *Elsa Barkley Brown, "Mothers of Mind," Double Stitch (1993).

The Meanings of History

Sept. 19
*Carl Becker, "Everyman His Own Historian" (1932).

Sept. 24
*Eric Hobsbawm, "Introduction: Inventing Tradition" eds. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (1983).
*Hugh Trever-Roper, "The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland" (1983).

Sept. 26
*Michael Kammen, "Some Patterns and Meanings of Memory Distortion in American History," In the Past Lane (1997).
*Michel-Rolph Trouillot, "The Presence in the Past," Silencing the Past (1995).

Oct 1
Second writing assignment due today:
Based on the readings and discussions of the past four weeks, write an essay critiquing your first essay? This one should be 3-5 pages long. We will break up into small groups for discussion and each group will report back to the whole class.

Industrialization and Empire

Oct 3
*Michael Adas, "Global Hegemony and the Rise of Technology as the Main Measure of Human Achievement," Machines as the Measure of Men (1989).
(Start reading Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for the following week.)

Oct 8
Fall Break: No Class

Oct 10
Video: "The Idea of Empire" (55 minutes.)

Oct 15
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902).
Third Assignment Due Today:
Discuss the different ways in which ideologies of difference based on race, civilization, and culture are used to vindicate theories/histories of empire. What do you make of Conrad’s journey into the “heart of darkness”? Whose “darkness” is it? Why? Please incorporate examples from the video and the readings to elucidate your arguments.

Oct 17
Advising Day: No Class

Oct 22
Today we will have a discussion on research methods: Choosing topics; creating bibliography (what is acceptable as sources); establishing question(s); analysis/conclusion as key to a well-done paper; format (how to submit a presentable paper.)

Case Study I: US Sketches of Empire

Oct 24
*Richard Slotkin "Buffalo Bill's 'Wild West' and the Mythologization of American Empire," Cultures of United States Imperialism (1993)
One-page proposal and preliminary bibliography for your final paper are due in class today.

Oct 29
*Kevin Gaines "Black Americans' Racial Uplift Ideology as 'Civilizing Mission'" Cultures of United States Imperialism (1993)

Oct 31
*Ronald Takaki, "The Masculine Thrust Toward Asia," Iron Cages (1987).

Nov 5
*CLR James “Abyssinia and the Imperialists” The CLR James Reader (1992), and “This Ain’t Ethiopia but It’ll Do” Robin Kelley Race Rebels (1994)

Case Study II: Colonizing the Mind: The South Asian Experience

Nov 7
*Sections from Zareer Masani’s Indian Tales of the Raj (1987)

Nov 12
*"Blood" and "Freedom," Granta 57 (Spring 1997).

Nov 14
*Sunil Khilnani, "Democracy," The Idea of India (1997), and Vivek’s “Vignette”

War and Memory in US History

Nov 19
*Jesse Limisch "Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America" The Underside of American History, fifth edition.

Nov 21
Thanksgiving Break: No Class

Nov 26
*Elizabeth Rauh Bethel “The Revolution Remembered: The Fifth of March, 1988” The Roots of African American Identity (1997)

Nov 28
*David Blight "'For Something Beyond the Battlefield': Frederick Douglass and Struggle for the Memory of the Civil War" JAH (1989) and *Edward L. Ayers "Worrying About the Civil War" ed. Karen Halttunen and Lewis Perry Moral Problems in American Life (1998)

Conclusion

Dec 3
Chapters from Lynn Hunt, et al, ed. Telling the Truth About History (1994)

Dec 5
*Gertrude Himmelfarb, "Some Reflections on the New History," AHR 94:3 (1989).
*Patricia Nelson Limerick, "Common Cause? Asian American History and Western American History," ed. Gary Y. Okihiro, et al., Privileging Positions (1995).

Dec 10
*Lawrence W. Levine "Explanations" and "Multiculturalism: Historians, Universities, and the Emerging Nation" The Opening of the American Mind

Dec 12
Summing-up...
Paper is due today. Submit it with your three essays and a self-evaluation. Extensions for extraordinary reasons only.

This page is maintained by Vivek Bhandari.
For comments, please contact vbhandari@hampshire.edu