All courses numbered 500 and above are graduate courses.
Undergraduates need to submit a course permit to enroll.
HIST 620 A History of Cultural History
Taught as schedule allows (consult the Course Directory)
What is cultural history: a set of research methods? questions? topics? interpretive assumptions? metanarratives? In this course, we will address these questions through a historical approach. We will examine some of the major writings of the early cultural historians of the nineteenth century, chart the broad expansion of cultural history in the twentieth, and discuss some of the implications for doing history in the century that lies before us. We will devote particular attention to the central importance of the era of the European Renaissance (and the history of early modern Europe) in the development of cultural history. In that process we will survey a range of the interdisciplinary themes, issues, and methods that have come to be known as cultural history, and the ways in which fields such as history, literary studies, the history of art, and anthropology have intersected over the years in the study of Europe 1300-1600. Authors will include: Burckhardt; Huizinga; Cassirer; Panofsky; Gombrich; Yates; Geertz; Ginzburg; Foucault; Greenblatt.
Course Syllabus (Web)
