Instructor: Dr Sorana Corneanu
SCHEDULE
Week 1: Introduction
Week 2: Intellectual history among other varieties of history
Reading: Collini, ‘The Identity of Intellectual History’, in Whatmore and Young, eds., Blackwell Companion
Week 3: Some core concerns (1): context
Reading: Cowan, ‘Intellectual, Social, Cultural History’, in Whatmore and Young, eds, Palgrave Advances
Week 4: Some core concerns (2): continuity and agency
Reading: Burrow, ‘Intellectual History in English Academic Life’, in Whatmore and Young, eds, Palgrave Advances
Week 5: Origins
Reading: Lovejoy, ‘Reflections on the History of Ideas’
Week 6: Discussion
Reading: Lovejoy, ‘The Meaning of Romanticism for the Historian of Ideas’
Week 7: Agency revisited: Cambridge Contextualism
Readings: Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’; ‘What Intellectual History Teaches Us’
Week 8: Discussion
Reading: Skinner, From Humanism to Hobbes, Introduction and chap. 3 (Machiavelli), 5 (Shakespeare)
Week 9: Continuity revisited: History of Science
Reading: Clark, ‘Intellectual History an History of Science’, in Whatmore and Young, eds., Blackwell Companion
Week 10: Discussion
Reading: Shapin, Social History of Truth, chap. 3 (A Social History of Truth-Telling), 5 (Epistemological Decorum)
Week 11: Cultural identity revisited
Reading: Condren et al., Philosopher in Early Modern Europe, Introduction and chap 1 (philosophical persona).
Week 12: Discussion
Reading: Condren et al., Philosopher in Early Modern Europe, chap. 10 (feminine philosophical persona), 11 (Locke)
Week 13: Contextualism to the trial
Readings: McMahon, ‘Return to the History of Ideas?’; Wickberg, ‘In the Environment of Ideas’
Week 14: Tutorial for final exam
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Condren, Conan et al., The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe: The Nature of a Contested Identity, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Lovejoy, Arthur O., ‘Reflections on the History of Ideas’, Journal of the History of Ideas 1 (1940)
Lovejoy, Arthur O., ‘The Meaning of Romanticism for the Historian of Ideas’, JHI 2 (1941)
McMahon, Darrin, ‘The Return of the History of Ideas?’, in eds. McMahon and Moyn Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History, Oxford, 2014.
Shapin, Steven, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Skinner, Quentin, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, in Visions of Politics, vol. I, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Skinner, Quentin, ‘What Intellectual History Teaches Us’, Governance Podcast, 2019.
Skinner, Quentin, From Humanism to Hobbes: Studies in Rhetoric and Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Whatmore, Richard and Brian Young, eds, Palgrave Advances in Intellectual History, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Whatmore, Richard and Brian Young, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Intellectual History, Wiley Blackwell, 2016.
Wickberg, Daniel, ‘In the Environment of Ideas: Arthur Lovejoy and the History of Ideas as a Form of Cultural History’, Modern Intellectual History 11 (2014).
REQUIREMENTS AND EVALUATION
- A minimum of 50% attendance
- Participation in class discussions, counting for 25% of the final mark
- An end-of-term written essay or written test, counting for 75% of the final mark
British Cultural Studies 