HIST 301
Approaching the Past: Writing the Past Fall 2016
Division II
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

“History” refers to the aggregate of past events as well as to the branch of knowledge that seeks to understand those past events. Whereas history courses often take as their content the first of these two meanings of history, focusing on the politics, society, and culture of a particular place in a particular historical era, this course will examine history’s often concealed “other” meaning: the practices of historians, their methods and assumptions. In so doing, this course aims to unsettle history majors’ own assumptions about what history “is” and what historians “do”. How do historians reconstruct the past, and how and why have their approaches to sources, theories, and narrative strategies changed over time? And on a deeper level, how have historians’ suppositions changed–if they have changed–about the nature of historical truth, knowledge, and the value of history to the societies in which they wrote? Taking history-writing itself as our object of study, over the course of the semester we will read the work of twelve, quite different historians from the classical to the modern era. Each week in our seminar meetings, we will subject these texts to a careful reading in order to understand and assess these historians’ theories and practices.
The Class: Format: discussion
Limit: 19
Expected: 15-19
Class#: 1562
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: evaluation will be based on class participation, weekly critical response papers to the assigned reading, and a final paper
Prerequisites: restricted to History majors and sophomores planning to major in History
Enrollment Preferences: senior, then junior, History majors
Distributions: Division II

Class Grid

Course Catalog Archive Search

TERM/YEAR
TEACHING MODE
SUBJECT
DIVISION



DISTRIBUTION



ENROLLMENT LIMIT
COURSE TYPE
Start Time
End Time
Day(s)