Tuesdays, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m.
Ballantine 335
Prof. Konstantin Dierks
Website: http://www.indiana.edu/~kdhist/H750-2008B.html
E-mail: kdierks@indiana.edu
Office hours: Ballantine 734, Tuesdays, 1:30-3:30 p.m., or by appointment
Office phone: 855-6288
Course description:
An extraordinary amount of current historical scholarship is being focused on geographic categories of analysis: “the global,” “the Atlantic,” the transnational, diaspora, borderlands, urbanization, imperialism, cosmopolitanism -- the list goes on and on. This course will first examine some theoretical and conceptual issues concerning the relationship between the historical and the geographic. To what degree, for instance, is the geographic either presupposing or subsuming the question of historical transformation? How does one relate the geographic to matters of social structure? Thereafter, the bulk of the course will be devoted to the preparation of an original research paper deploying a geographic category of analysis.
Course requirements:
CLASS PARTICIPATION. Because this course is an intensive seminar, its success depends on your regular attendance and your active participation. You are required to submit a written response to each week's readings, always mindful that you are reading for argument, not content.
READING ASSIGNMENTS. Weekly reading will involve new monographs or recent theoretical essays. In most cases, the material will be available either directly via IUCAT or as a pdf file via this website.
WRITING ASSIGNMENTS. There will be four weekly response papers (1-2 single-spaced pages) during the reading portion of the seminar, and, during the research portion of the semester, three partial drafts and ultimately an article-length research paper, ready for submission to an academic journal.
ASSISTANCE. If at any time during the semester you have questions about the course website, reading material, writing assignments, or your performance in this class, please feel free to speak to me before or after class, during office hours, via email, or via telephone to make an appointment.
Course books:
Colley, Linda. The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History. New York: Pantheon Books, 2007. * CT788.M2187 C65
Course syllabus:
| January 8 |
WEEK 1 Course Introduction; A Model of Good Practice I Colley, Linda.
The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History. New York:
Pantheon Books, 2007. |
| January 15 |
WEEK 2 Geographic Correctives I (The “Globalization” That Is Not One) Cooper, Frederick. “What Is the Concept of Globalization Good For? An African Historian’s Perspective.” African Affairs 100 (2001): 189-213. Eley, Geoff. “Historicizing the Global, Politicizing Capital: Giving the Present a Name.” History Workshop Journal 63 (2007): 154-188. Burton, Antoinette M. “Not Even Remotely Global? Method and Scale in World History.” History Workshop Journal 64 (2008): 323-328. |
| January 22 | WEEK
3 Geographic Correctives II (Urbanization and Beyond)
Mbembe, Achille, and
Nuttall, Sarah.
“Writing the World from
an African Metropolis.”
Public Culture 16
(2004): 347-372. |
| January 29 |
WEEK
4 Geographic Correctives III (The Death of “American Studies”) Dimock, Wai Chee. “Introduction: Planet and America, Set and Subset.” In Shades of the Planet: American Literature as World Literature. Wai Chee Dimock and Lawrence Buell, eds. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. 1-16.
Tinsman, Heidi, and
Shukla, Sandhya.
“Introduction: Across
the Americas.” In
Imagining our Americas:
Toward a Transnational
Frame. Sandhya
Shukla and Heidi
Tinsman, eds. Durham:
Duke University Press,
2007. 1-33. |
| February 5 |
WEEK 5 A Model of Good Practice II Steinmetz, George. “‘The Devil’s Handwriting’: Precolonial Discourse, Ethnographic Acuity and Cross-Identification in German Colonialism.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45 (2003): 41-95. |
| February 12 |
WEEK 6 Individual Consultations |
| February 19 |
WEEK 7 |
| February 26 |
WEEK 8 |
| March 3-4 |
WEEK 9 Monday, March 3, WRITING ASSIGNMENT #1 DUE Tuesday, March 4, Individual Consultations |
| March 10-14 |
Spring Break -- no class |
| March 18 |
WEEK 10 |
| March 25 |
WEEK 11 |
| March 31 - April 1 |
WEEK 12 Monday, March 31, WRITING ASSIGNMENT #2 DUE Tuesday, April 1, Individual Consultations |
| April 8 |
WEEK 13 |
| April 15 |
WEEK 14 WRITING ASSIGNMENT #3 DUE |
| April 22 |
WEEK 15 |
| April 29 |
WEEK 16 WRITING ASSIGNMENT #4 DUE in lieu of class on Thursday, we shall meet for supper at my house, Tuesday evening, 6:30 p.m. |