HIST 102

HISTORICAL METHOD AND THOUGHT II

BOĞAZİÇİ ÜNİVERSİTESİ

SPRING 2021
 HIST 102 – HISTORICAL METHOD AND THOUGHT II

Koray Durak, Spring 2021

Hours: Monday, 11 am-1 pm. Tuesday, 10 am-11 am. Office hours: by appointment

Course Description: An introduction to methods and theories related to historical analysis and research.
The course follows the roughly chronological framework of Hist 101, and concentrates more closely on
revisionist and post-revisionist trends that have emerged in historical research and writing from the 1970s
into the 2010s. Lectures, combined with class discussions and short research projects will expose students to
basic discussions related to the disciplinary foundations of history, its claims to truth, as well as to the ethical
implications of history as practice and a platform of public debate. The main aim of Hist 102 is to introduce
students to the various ways in which historians have attempted to understand and represent the past, and to
raise a critical awareness about the potentials and complexities of historical practice. Course Format:
The course will be conducted through a combination of lectures, discussions and assignments. The assigned
readings constitute an essential part of the course material. However, attendance to the lectures is crucial
since these will provide a range of information connected to but not necessarily covered in the readings.
Students who do not attend the midterm exam are automatically graded F.

Readings: All required readings for the course are available in digital format under the B.U. Library
electronic reserves section (go to “reserves” in the library website homepage and search by “course code”).
Works for consulting and further reading: Alun Munslow, The Routledge Companion to Historical
Studies (London and New York, 2000). A. Schneider and D. Woolf (eds) The Oxford History of Historical
Writing (Oxford & New York, 2011). Plagiarism: Unacknowledged use of other people’s ideas, words or
research without proper credit constitutes plagiarism, a serious violation of academic rules that entails
disciplinary action. Course Requirements: Midterm Exam (25%), Final Exam (35%), Class
assignments/short paper (10%), Attendance and participation (30%)

Week 1: (March 22-23) Introduction; what does a historian do?

Week 2: (March 29-30) The social turn: history meets sociology

Required Readings:
J. Tosh, the Pursuit of History, 4th edition (Harlow, 2006), chapters 5 and 8.

Week 3: (April 5-6) The cultural turn: history meets anthropology

Required Readings:
Tosh, chapter 10.
R. Darnton, “Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Séverin,” in The Great Cat
Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (NY,1984): 74-104.

Week 4: (April 12-13) Microhistory; popular culture and the history of everyday life

Required Readings:
Georg Iggers, “From Macro- to Microhistory: The History of Everyday Life,” in Iggers,
Historiography in the Twentieth Century (Hanover and London, 1997): pp. 101- 117.
Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: the Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller (Middlesex,
1982 [Italian ed. 1976]), 1-30, 125-128. (preface, sections 1-12, 61, 62).

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Week 5: (April 19-20) The post-modern turn: does history meet its own death?
Required Readings:
Tosh, chapter 7.
M. Donnelly and C. Norton, “the Future of History,” in Doing History (London and New York,
2011): 173-190.
Week 6: (April 26) History and theory: models, methods, and problems
Required Readings:
P. Burke, History and Social Theory (Ithaca, 1993), pp. 22-43, 104-129.
(April 27): Midterm
Week 7: (May 3-4) Power and (national) identity I
Required Readings:
P. Burke, pp. 56-91
A. Armstrong, Nations Before Nationalism (Chapel Hill, 1982) 1-15, 51-59, 90-104, 127-154, 164-
176, 197-201, 238-241, 279-282.
Week 8: (May 17-18) Power and (national) identity II/ The roles we play: family and gender I
Required Readings:
P. Burke, pp. 47-55
J. Des Jardins, “Women’s and Gender History,” Oxford History of Historical Writing, vol 5 (Oxford,
2011), 136-156.
Week 9: (May 24-25) The roles we play: family and gender II
Required Readings:
B. Neil, “An Introduction to Questions of Gender in Byzantium” in Questions of Gender in Byzantine
Society, ed. B. Neil (London, 2016), 1-10.
S. F. Tougher, "Bearding Byzantium: Masculinity, eunuchs and the Byzantine life course," in B. Neil
and L. Garland, Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society (2018, Farnham), 153-166.
A. Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York, 1996), 1-6
Week 10: (May 31-June 1) Postcolonial challenges: history and alterity
Required Readings:
M. D. and C. Norton, “Histories from Another Perspective,” in Doing History (London and New
York, 2011): pp. 137-145.
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 G. Prakash, 'Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism', American Historical Review, 99:5 (1994),
1475-1490.

Week 11: (June 7-8) World history, globalism and the environment

Required Readings:
J. Osterhammel, “World History,” in A. Schneider and D. Woolf (eds) The Oxford History of
Historical Writing (Oxford and New York, 2011): pp. 93-111.
J.R. McNeill, “Environmental History,” in Ulinka Rublack, A Concise Companion to
History (Oxford and New York, 2011): pp. 299-305; 314-315.

Week 12: (June 14-15) Memory and oral history

Required Readings:
Alon Confino, “History and Memory,” in Axel Schneider and Daniel Woolf (eds) The Oxford History
of Historical Writing (Oxford and New York, 2011): pp. 36-51.
Alessandro Portelli, “Tryin’ to Gather a Little Knowledge: Some Thoughts on the Ethics of Oral
History,” in The Battle of Valle Giulia (Madison, 1997): pp. 55-71.
Leyla Neyzi, “Remembering Smyrna/Izmir: Shared History, Shared Trauma,” History and Memory 20,
No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2008): pp. 106-127.

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Week 2: (March 29-30) The social turn: history meets sociology

Required Readings:
J. Tosh, the Pursuit of History, 4th edition (Harlow, 2006), chapters 5 and 8.