Fall Semester 2007 Tuesday / Thursday 9-9:50 a.m. Devlin Hall 009 Prof. Stephen Schloesser: schloess@bc.edu Teaching Assistants: Casey Beaumier: casey.beaumier.1@bc.edu, Mimi Cowan: cowanmb@bc.edu Amanda Cragen: amanda.cragen.1@bc.edu http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/his/schloesser/hs041-042/fall/hs041.html The course subtitled "Inventing the Subjective Individual" tells the story of early modernities as the invention of subjective individualism, i.e., of the individual rights-bearing subject and not the community as the primary source of conceptual significance and ethical value. IN THEORY, a traditional society is one in which community and communal values have priorty over the individual. Seen this way, modernity completely rejects and negates tradition. IN PRACTICE, however, modernity is always an ongoing negotiation with some elements of inherited (or retrieved) tradition - and so it produces multiple modernities that are often hybridizations of seemingly self-contradictory elements. [Photo credit: Hazel Thompson: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/world/europe/22veil.html]
SCHEDULE OF TOPICS WEEK 1 TWO WORLD-VIEWS: ARISTOTLE v. PLATO // SUBSTANCE v. SHADOWS T 09/04 Introductory lecture: What is Cultural History? no reading; first meeting R 09/06 Ca. 1150: Aristotle s Children: Greece/Persia/Cordoba/Paris/Oxford WEEK 2 FROM COHERENCE TO TRAUMA = MEDIATION IN CRISIS T 09/11 Ca. 1300: Medieval Order: Centers/Margins/Mediation/Purgation Richard E. Rubenstein, Aristotle s Children: 12 > 31 [...over his intellectual legacy. ] 38 [ The Greek Historian Strabo... ] > 46 78 [ Imagine yourself... ] > 87 168 > 205 [suggested but not required] 206 > 238 193 > 204; 206 > 212 [suggested but not required] 216 > 258 [...just after his death in 1274"] Maria Menocal, Ornament of the World 17 > 49 [suggested but not required] 53 > 90 (City of Cordoba) 91 > 100 (Fall of 1009) 130 > 146 (City of Toledo) 174 > 188 (European network of Cluny) De Lacy O Leary, Arabic Thought and Its Place in History 275 > 320 [suggested but not required] Timothy M. Renick, Aquinas for Armchair Theologians Selections in pdf [suggested but not required] R.I. Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society Selections in pdf [suggested but not required] John Boswell, Christianity, Homosexuality, and Social Tolerance Selections in pdf [suggested but not required] R 09/13 Trauma of 1348-1350: Plague/Fortuna/Distance/Uncertainty
WEEK 3 RENAISSANCE HUMANISM AS POST-TRAUMATIC RECOVERY T 09/18 Ca. 1400: Post-traumatic Narratives: Nominalism/Totentanz/Polyphony/Perspective W Section readings Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor Sander Gilman, Disease and Representation Arthur G. Neal, National Trauma and Collective Memory Norman Cantor, In the Wake of the Plague Jeffrey C. Alexander, Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma [suggested but not required] Neil J. Smelser, September 11, 2001, as Cultural Trauma [suggested but not required] R 09/20 1480s: On the Dignity of Humanity : Renaissance Hybridity / Christian Humanism WEEK 4 THE GUTENBERG GALAXY: INDIVIDUALISM/ INQUISITION / REFORMATION T 09/25 1492: Iberian Purity/Danger: Statist Unity/Expelling Margins/Inventing Europe Richard E. Rubenstein, Aristotle s Children 230 > 270 258 [ After a few preliminary warnings... ] > 263 269 [ One difficulty in ascertaining... ] > 278 [ It was a bloodbath. ] Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger Reza Aslan, No god but God xiii > xvii [pdf] Ian and Jenifer Glynn, The Life and Death of Smallpox [Suggested but not required] Claude Quétel, History of Syphilis [Suggested but not required]
William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples [Suggested but not required] Helen Rawlings, Church, Religion and Society in Early Modern Spain [Suggested but not required] Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest [Suggested but not required] R 09/27 1517: Luther vs. Aristotle: Print/Privacy/Individualism/Interpretation Parents weekend: 09/28-09/30 WEEK 5 EARLY MODERN CHRISTIANITY: COMMUNITY / INDIVIDUAL HYBRIDITY T 10/02 1540: Ignatius Loyola: Accommodation/Vocation/Difficulties of Discernment none R 10/04 Exam #1 WEEK 6 RENAISSANCE WANING: PERILS OF PLURALISM/ LIMITS OF TOLERANCE T 10/09 1582: Jesuit Cosmopolis: Christian Humanism beyond the Mediterranean 310 > 314 339 > 341 Lionel M. Jensen, Manufacturing Confucianism The Jesuit Relations Montaigne, Essays TBA Glenn S. Sunshine, The Reformation for Armchair Theologians [suggested but not required] Steven Paulson, Luther for Armchair Theologians [suggested but not required] Christopher Elwood, Calvin for Armchair Theologians [suggested but not required]
R 10/11 1598: Sola Texta: Interpretation/Instability/Pyrrhonism/Toleration WEEK 7 1600s=1492 TRIUMPHANT: MONOPOLIZED VIOLENCE / QUEST FOR CERTAINTY T 10/16 Trauma of 1618-1648: New Narrative / Counter-Renaissance / Quest for Certainty Richard E. Rubenstein, Aristotle s Children 271 > 298 315 > 341 Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics R 10/18 1633: Scientific Revolution : From Narrative to Numeracy WEEK 8 REINVENTING CHRISTIANITY : CALVINISM, COMMERCE, CAPITALISM T 10/23 1692: Paradise Lost and Regained: Calvinism/Puritanism/New England/Witches! Jerry Z. Muller, The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought Chapter on Adam Smith Peter Macinnis, Bittersweet: The Story of Sugar Erna Paris, Long Shadows: Truth, Lies, and History Ron Eyerman, Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity Herbert S. Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade R 10/25 1700: Erasing Eden: Labor as Calling/Capital/Risk/Interest/Property/Protection WEEK 9 RACIALIST SLAVERY: THE HUMAN COST OF LUXURY GOODS T 10/30 1705: Terrible Transformation: Heathenism to Racialism/Human Cost of Luxury
none R 11/01 Exam #2 WEEK 10 POLITICAL ABSOLUTISM, SCIENTIFIC RATIONALISM, BAROQUE CULTURE T 11/06 1715: Panoptical Modernity: Versailles/Absolutism/Persian Harem 341 > 362 [ Jefferson at eighty-one; Adams at ninety. ] Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, Newton and the Culture of Newtonianism Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy Selection TBA [weblink] Leibniz, Theodicy Selection TBA [weblink] Pope, Essay on Man Selection TBA [weblink] Montesquieu, Persian Letters Selection TBA [weblink] R 11/08 1742/1747: Evening in the Palace of Reason: Baroque as Absolut Culture WEEK 11 ENLIGHTENMENT(S): MODEST OR TOTALIZING EPISTEMOLOGY? T 11/13 Trauma of 1755: Post-Tsunami Enlightenment/s: Modesty or Metanarrative? Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History 88 > 122 [suggested but not required] 123 > 160 Denis Diderot, Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville Excerpt on marriage [pdf] Voltaire, A Poem on the Lisbon Disaster Voltaire, Candide, or Optimism TBA E. J. Graff, What is Marriage For? [suggested but not required]
R 11/15 1768: Mozart and Marriage: Bourgeois Patronage/Portraits/Salons/Freemasons/Opera THANKSGIVING BREAK: Week of 19-23 November WEEK 12 TRANSATLANTIC REVOLUTIONS: TWO PHILOSOPHIES OF HUMAN NATURE T 11/27 1776: We the People : Original Primitive Innocence or Radical Human Depravity? Susan Dunn, Sister Revolutions 3 > 52 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract Excerpts [pdf] Abbé Sieyès, What is the Third Estate? R 11/29 1778: A Treaty of Amity and Commerce : Self-Determination/Consumerism WEEK 13 SUBJECTIVE INDIVIDUALISM: PROMISES AND PERILS T 12/04 1789: Storming the Bastille: Revolution of the Rights of Man Susan Dunn, Sister Revolutions 53 > 101 137 > 161 193 > 208 R 12/06 1791-1792: Terror(ism): Promises and Perils of Subjective Individualism Exam #3 TBA
Required texts (available in bookstore): ========================================== COONTZ, Stephanie: Marriage, a History; from Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage (2005) DUNN, Susan: Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light (1999) HECHT, Jennifer Michael: Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson (2003) MULLER, Jerry Z.: The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought (2002) RUBENSTEIN, Richard E.: Aristotle s Children. How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages (2003).