HIST
506 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
Allan
Megill, University of Virginia, Spring 2003
212
Randall Hall, Fridays 1:00-3:30 p.m. c:\50601\50603desyes
COURSE DESCRIPTION AND
REQUIREMENTS
Note:
For full information about this course, you need to have in your possession
both this handout and the handout headed "Syllabus/Selected
Bibliography." You should read this handout, and the first two pages of
the other handout, carefully. You will also need the handout headed
"Virtual Class Packet."
INSTRUCTOR
CONTACT INFORMATION: Office Location: 221 Randall Hall.
Office
Hours:
usually M W 3:40-4:40, and by arrangement. You should not feel confined
to my scheduled office hours. An efficient means of arranging appointment times
is by e-mailing me, at megill@virginia.edu; it is best to e-mail me a
day or two in advance. I can almost always arrange meetings at other times than
the official hours. Note: On occasion I shall have to cancel office
hours because of other obligations. It is a very good idea, therefore, to
contact me ahead of time even if you plan to come during regularly scheduled
hours. I cannot guarantee my presence at any particular scheduled office
hour.
Telephone
Numbers:
Office: 924-6414 (voice-mail after several rings if there is no answer).
Home: 971-8744 (answering machine after several rings). You should feel
free to phone me at home: I prefer working there to working in Randall Hall. If
we are otherwise occupied we generally don't answer the phone; but avoid 5
p.m.-9 p.m., and don't phone later than midnight (although, if you do, it
doesn't matter, since the phone won't be heard anyway).
E-mail: megill@virginia.edu.
Instructor home page: http://www.people.virginia.edu/~adm9e
Course
home page:
http:/toolkit.virginia.edu/HIST506
Course
Subject and Rationale: The class aims to provide a reflective history of the
core of Western historical thinking and writing, and also at the same time to
provide some theoretical devices for understanding historiography generally.
Thus it combines history and theory. The accompanying syllabus/bibliography
will give you a fairly good idea of the coverage of the course. It is my
contention that some knowledge of the history of historiography and of the rudiments
of historical theory is essential if one is to understand and "do"
history at the highest level. The risk in not having this knowledge is that one
is more likely to fall into banality or error.
The course is intended to be
useful to students both in the discipline of history and outside it. To the
former it offers an entré to the far from negligible field of historical
theory. To the latter it offers a quick way of gaining some sense of how
historians (as distinguished from literary scholars, political scientists,
anthropologists, scholars in religious studies, and so on) think about the past
and about the world in general. To both groups, it perhaps offers some new
perspectives on some specific works or genres of history.
Each time I teach this course I
have in hand one or more writing projects related to it. You will note from the
materials section of the toolkit that many items--some published, some
unpublished--were written by me. This semester I am preoccupied with making
progress on a book, “Historical Thinking,” that will bring together in some
sort of comprehensible way some of the points I have made about “historical
thinking” in previous work. I also have a shorter article project, on
“Historical Coherence” or “Coherence in History,” underway, commissioned by a
journal. My most recently published article was seen by students last year in a
variant of this course, and an article that is in press also has some
connection with the course.
For some years I have been quite
concerned with the ethics of history (however that might be understood): it is
a concern that goes back half a decade and more. This has become a hot topic in
some recent historiographical discussion, as you will learn from a few items on
the toolkit, as well as from the Web site 111.hnn.us..
Course
Requirements: Practically speaking, the most important requirement of this, and
other, 500-level courses that I teach is the writing of a fairly substantial
paper (of 20-25 page length). The topic of the paper needs in some way to be
related to the theme of the course: that is, the paper will need to deal with
issues of history-writing, or of historical thinking more generally, and it
will also need to connect with some of the specific literature that we shall be
dealing with in class.
Undergraduate students are well
advised to look for a paper topic that they already have some experience with,
through other courses or through their own reading. History graduate students
who take this class generally try to write a paper in which they apply what
they learn in this class to their empirical research field. Mutatis mutandis,
graduate students in other departments either do the same thing, or they
introduce me to relevant literature in their field (on such issues as evidence,
narrative, and the like). All paper topics are to be discussed in advance with
me. You are expected to have given me, in writing, an overview of your proposed
topic by the week of March 10-14, 2001 at the latest. Note that if you are
graduating, there are severe time constraints in regard to the writing of the
paper, and you should not leave things too late.
In addition, you will also be
expected to participate effectively in the collective work of the class. In
particular, you will be asked, a few times a semester, to be the
"reporter" for part of a class session, producing an account of the
discussion that you will post on the class e-mail list by a day before the next
class. You will also be expected, once or twice, to produce some sort of short
written response, also to be posted on the class list, to the reading that we
will be doing. So that I can keep this work in mind during final grading,
please hold onto copies of this writing, and submit these copies when you
submit the final paper. (If you aren't easily able to print off e-mail
messages, let me know: I can usually supply a copy.)
Course
Reading:
The following books are required for the course. Note that they are all on
reserve, except for one book that has just been published. I have ordered
copies of all books at the University of Virginia Bookstore:
Fritz Stern, ed., The
Varieties of History from Voltaire to the Present, revised ed.
R. G. Collingwood, The Idea
of History, revised edited by Jan Van der Dussen
Michel de Certeau, The
Writing of History
Brian Fay, Philip Pomper, and
Richard T. Vann, eds., Contemporary History and Theory: The Linguistic Turn
and Beyond
Jörn Rüsen, ed., Western
Historical Thinking
In addition, there is a significant amount of reading in article or excerpt form, some uploaded onto the toolkit, some available via JSTOR or The History Cooperative. I shall be adding some of my own material-in-process as we move through the semester.