PERSPECTIVES ON MODERNITY II: MODELS OF CULTURAL HISTORY

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