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16:201 First-Year Graduate Colloquium

Fall 2006

218EPB Thursdays 1:30-3:20 p.m.

Instructor	Paula Michaels	Phone	335-2287
Office	SH280	E-mail	paula-michaels@uiowa.edu
Office Hours	Thursdays 12:00-1:00, 3:45-5:00 p.m., and by appt.	URL	http://www.uiowa.edu/~c016201/index.htm

Description:

This course introduces new graduate students to their lifelong professional inquiry into the question “What is history?” The class is divided into three units. The first explores the animating question of our profession from theoretical and philosophical perspectives through the reading of both classic and recent texts on the subject. The second unit delves into some of the more widespread methodological approaches to history during the past couple of decades. Finally, in the third unit, you get you feet wet in the historiography of your own subject of research. You will produce a 15-page historiographical paper on a subject that you hope to pursue for your MA thesis.

Texts:

Required Books (available at IMU Bookstore):

Bonnell, Victoria and Lynn Hunt, eds. Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture. University of California Press, 1999.

Booth, Wayne C., Joseph M. Williams, Gregory G. Colomb. The Craft of Research. University of Chicago, 2003.

Carr, Edward Hallet. What Is History? New York: Vintage, 1967.

Gaddis, John Lewis. The Landscape of History. Oxford University Press, 2004.

Iggers, Georg G. Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge.  Wesleyan University Press, 2005. 

Powell, James. Postmodernism for Beginners. Writers and Readers, 1997.

Robin, Ron. Scandals and Scoundrels: Seven Cases that Shook the Academy. University of California Press, 2004.

Recommended Book:

The Chicago Manual of Style. University of Chicago Press, 2003.