All courses numbered 500 and above are graduate courses.
Undergraduates need to submit a course permit to enroll.
HIST 630 Narrative & Historical Writing
Taught as schedule allows (consult the Course Directory)
This course focuses on how historians write, how they select evidence, craft structures of analysis, and shape narratives. It is not a course on theory or, strictly speaking, methodology. It is instead an examination of the forms of historical writing, from grand narrative to micro-history. Today much of the reading public perceives scholarly writing as hopelessly tedious, jargon-ridden, and inaccessible, while professional historians tend to view "popular" history, or narrative in general, with condescension. (Gordon Wood, "Novel History," New Republic). Some worry that academic historians are writing for an ever more specialized and hence ever smaller audience. "Clio," Simon Shama has suggested, "has a problem," (New York Times Magazine), a view echoed by James McPherson ("What’s the Matter With History?" (Princeton Alumni Weekly), and Patricia Nelson Limerick, ("Dancing with Professors: The Trouble with Academic Prose," New York Times Sunday Book Review). Why is so much scholarly writing so bad? What is the relationship between narrative and analysis? What are the narrative options historians have as they set out to translate their research into prose? How, in short, do they construct their stories?
We will read a number of articles dealing with narrative and theory as well as a variety of texts in American, European, and World historiography, among others: Natalie Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre; Richard Price, Alabi’s World; John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive. The course will also offer an opportunity for students to work on writing projects, either specifically for this course or for others, circulating drafts, and discussing them with the class.
