Course instructor: Dr. Sorana Corneanu
SCHEDULE
Week 1: Introduction
Week 2: Cultural history and the meanings of ‘culture’
Reading: Hammersley, The Concept of Culture, chap.1 (Introduction)
Week 3: Old-style history of culture
Reading: Burke, What Is Cultural History?, chap. 1 (The Great Tradition)
Week 4: Discussion
Readings: Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance, pdf 155-60; Huizinga, Homo Ludens, chap. 4 (Play and Law); Elias, Civilizing Process, 99-107
Week 5: The anthropological turn
Readings: Burke, What Is Cultural History?, chap. 3 (The Moment of Historical Anthropology); Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, Preface to the Italian edition
Week 6: Discussion
Readings: Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, sect. 10-21 (pp. 21-47); Frijhoff, ’Foucault Reformed by Certeau’, sect. IV-V (pp. 89-93)
Week 7: Further discussion
Readings: Bremmer and Roodenburg, A Cultural History of Gesture, Introduction and selected chapters
Week 8: Practices, objects and the body
Readings: Burke, What Is Cultural History?, chap. 4 (A New Paradigm?); De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, General Introduction
Week 9: Discussion
Readings: De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, chap. 9 (Spatial Stories); Frijhoff, ’Foucault Reformed by Certeau’, sect. VI-VIII (pp. 93-99)
Week 10: Further discussion
Readings: Porter, Madness, Introduction and selected chapters
Week 11: Constructivism to the trial
Reading: Burke, What Is Cultural History?, chap. 6 (Beyond the Cultural Turn?)
Week 12: Discussion
Readings: Grafton, Footnote, chap 1 (Footnotes: The Origin of a Species); Classen et al., Aroma, Introduction
Week 13: Further discussion
Reading: Ernst, ed., Histories of the Normal and Abnormal, Introduction and selected chapters
Week 14: Tutorial for final exam
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bremmer, Jan and Herman Roodenburg, eds., A Cultural History of Gesture: From Antiquity to the Present Day, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993.
Burckhardt, Jacob, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S.G.C. Middlemore, rev. Irene Gordon, New York: The New American Library, 1961.
Burke, Peter, What Is Cultural History?, Cambridge: Polity, 2004.
Classen, Constance, David Howes and Anthony Synnott, eds., Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell, London and New York: Routledge, 1994.
De Certeau, Michel, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984.
Elias, Norbert, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, trans. Edmund Jephcott, ed. Eric Dunning et al., Malden: Blackwell, 1994.
Ernst, Waltraud, ed., Histories of the Normal and the Abnormal: Social and Cultural Histories of Norms and Normativity, London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
Frijhoff, Willem, ‘Foucault Reformed by Certeau: Historical Strategies of Discipline and Everyday Tactics of Appropriation’, in John Neubauer, ed., Cultural History After Foucault, New York: De Gruyter, 1999.
Ginzburg, Carlo, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.
Grafton, Anthony, The Footnote: A Curious History, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Hammersley, Martyn, The Concept of Culture: A History and a Reappraisal, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Huizinga, Johan, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949.
Porter, Roy, Madness: A Brief History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
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 