4:00-6:00P     R     BH335

Topic:  Introduction to cultural history
Obtain on-line auth for above section from graduate secretary
Above section meets with CULS C701

What is cultural history?  It is defined through particular kinds of
subject matter, through a distinctive methodology, through new
historical sensibilities, or through a different hermeneutics of
suspicion in historical analysis?  This course critically evaluates
this exciting field as it has developed over the last generation.  It
introduces debates that are currently at the center of
cultural-historical practice, as well as works that are considered
"classics", in the sense that they have become indispensable reference
points for all practitioners in the field, shaping historical practice
irreversibly and far beyond the boundaries of their specific subject
matter.  While obviously reading key theoretical manifestos which
"new" cultural historians repeatedly invoke as their sources of
inspiration, the  course is primarily based on works of actual
historical research (and historicist research in neighboring
disciplines), drawn  from a number of different periods (primarily
early-modern to modern), places and problematics. Although the
historical topics and contexts raised by those books are of obvious
importance, students are expected to make the methodological,
theoretical and conceptual breakthroughs they represent the center of
their attention.  Typical topics that will be discussed in this course
include the history of class and the "linguistic turn", the move from
history of women to history of gender (and sex); different
methodological approaches to cross-cultural encounters (and
understandings of "race"); the history, and validity of the
distinction between fact and fiction; the uses and abuses of
"narrative"; the origins of historical meta-narratives (e.g.
"modernity") and the stakes in their de-naturalization; the dangers of
cultural constructionism and the potential comeback
of "neo-essentialism".  Of particular interest is the breaking of
disciplinary boundaries entailed by cultural history - both within the
study of history and its cognate neighbors (in particular literary
criticism and history of art), thus expanding the purview of
cultural-historical interest (to novels, art, drama, etc). Students
are expected to bring the historical and historiographical questions
raised in this course to bear on the planning and conceptualization of
their own historical research.