European
Social History, 1789-1938
Social history is a catch-all term,
encompassing topics as diverse as gender roles, social classes,
technological
change, demography, and cultural practices. This course examines
European
social history from the eighteenth century up to, but not including,
the Second
World War. It presupposes a general knowledge of political history, and
focusing instead on European experiences in everyday life.
Essay on a
novel 20%
Research paper 30%
Midterm 20%
Final 20%
Discussion
10%
The Midterm and Final exam are both
take-home. You will get a choice of three
questions, and have five pages to answer one of the three. Questions
will focus
on the course readings. The final exam is not cumulative, it is
basically a
second midterm.
The essay on a novel (5 pages) is due the
Friday of the week listed.
This assignment has two goals. First, students are exposed to some
outstanding
works of fiction, which contributes all-around to a liberal arts
education.
However, this assignment is also designed to teach students how to use
a work
of fiction as a historical document. Your paper, therefore, should show
how the
novel shows us something about the mentality of the society it
describes. This
is not an exercise in literary
criticism! Your paper should not analyze plot or characters, except
insofar as
these illustrate social history. Instead, focus on how the author
portrays
class or nationality, technological change, social attitudes, etc.
Week 1 The
Old Regime
W
Intro
to course
F
The
old regime: political rights in a warrior state.
King-Nobility-Peasants; Clergy
and Townspeople.
Week 2
M
Aristocratic
culture: hierarchy and attempts to rationalize it.
W
Social
mobility as promise and threat; elite responses: sumptuary laws
F
Serfdom
and the economic transformations that undermined it
Le Roy Ladurie Saint Simon and the Court of Louis XIV “Hierarchy
and Rank” 23-61
(38 pages)
Huges Russia
in the Age of Peter the Great “The Petrine Court” 248-297 (49
pages)
Take the online “Guided tour of women’s
fashion” http://www.marquise.de/en/1700/womenguide/18guide0.shtml
and the “Guided tour of men’s fashion”
http://www.marquise.de/en/1700/menguide/18men0.shtml
Novel de
Lados Dangerous Liasons
Week 3 The early modern Family
M
Marriage
as a legal status. Female honor, male honor
W
Sexuality
outside the family: Prostitution
F
The
Enlightenment, and the Church’s steady decline
Rebecca Spang. The Invention of the
Restaurant, “Hiding in Restaurants” 207-233
(26 pages)
Novel Jane
Austin Pride and Prejudice
Week 4 The
French Revolution
M
The
social basis of enlightenment nationalism: printing presses and the
middle
class
W
The
Nation in Arms: new sacralities, festivals of unity, anti-aristocratic
feelings
F
Feminist
responses to “National Brotherhood”: Gouges, Wollstonecraft.
See also:
and “Costumes of the French Revolution”
http://www.costumes.org/history/100pages/frenchrevdirect.htm
Novel Stendhal
The Red and the Black
M
National
responses to the French Revolution in occupied
W
Reaction:
Royal families and “Official Nationalism”
F
Enlightenment,
Romanticism. German and west-Slavic nationalism
Levinger Enlightened
Nationalism “A Nation of Aristocrats,” “A nation of Romantics,”
71-125
Novel: Mickiewicz
Pan Tadeusz
M
Traditional
artisans and mechanization
W
The
politics and ideology of the “working class”
F
Technological
progress: Steam, Railways
E.P. Thompson The Making of the
English Working Class, “Standards and
Experiences.” 347-384
Joan Wallach Scott, The Glassworkers of Carmaux (first
half of book)
Novel: Charles Dickens: David
Copperfield, Hard Times or Victor Hugo Les Miserables
Week 7
East European Responses to West European Progress
M
Aristocratic
liberalism in
W
East
European nobles and the end of Serfdom.
F
The
fear of bureaucracy, the promise of the state Midterm: One
week to do a take-home essay
Janos The
Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, “The Impulse to Reform,” part
of
“State and Society,” 35-118.
Week 8 Urbanization
M
The
spread of the cash economy, decline of the rural order
W
Railways:
factories and the village
F
Expanding
cities: technologies of urbanization Midterm
due!
Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. The Railway
Journey.
Evans Death
in
[no novel this week, write the exam instead]
Week 9 Local
Politics: new actors
M
New
social types: the clerk, the shop assistant
W
Dissecting
the middle class
F
Nobles,
officials, bourgeois: competing elites
Philip Nord Paris
Shopkeepers and the Politics of Resentment “Grands Magasins,”
“Haussmanization” (2 chapters)
Novel Émile
Zola The Ladies’
Week 10
Sexuality and moral Panic
M
New
urban types: women in public.
W
Moral
Panic: controlling female sexuality, prostitution
F
Overseas
empire at home: changing consumption, colonial views of non-whites
McClintock Imperial
Leather 75-130, 207-230 (53 pages)
Pictures of Victorian women:
http://www.cartes.fsnet.co.uk/date/main.htm
Laura Engelstein The Keys to
Happiness, “End of Innocence, Sex and the Anti-Semite”
254-332 (78 pages).
Novel Cherneshevsky
What is to be Done?
M
Manliness:
military culture, dueling in
W
The
Front experience: troops vs. generals
F
Home
fronts and women.
See also “Art of the First World War”
http://www.art-ww1.com/gb/texte/003text.html
See also
“Photos of the Great War”
http://www.gwpda.org/photos/greatwar.htm
Novels Jaroslav
Hašek The Adventures of the Good Soldier
Schweik, Remarque All Quiet on the
Western Front
Roth The
Radetzsky March
W
Ideology,
terror, secret police, the show trial.
F
“Shirt
movements” in western Europe.
Week 14
Militarization and the coming deluge
F
The
end of civilization?
Theweleit Male
Fantasies, vol. 1. “Men and Women” 3-50
Additional
Catherine
Hall, Civilising Subjects: Colony and
Metropole in the English Imagination
Dror
Wahrman Imagining the Middle Class
Michael
Miller, The Bon Marché: Bourgeois Culture
and the Department Store
Sewell Structure and Mobility
Bradley Muzhik and Muscovite
Janos Politics of Backwardness
Arno Mayer The Persistence of the Old Regime
Peter Gay The Cultivation of Hatred
George
Mosse Nationalism and Sexuality
Peter Gay Schnitzler’s Century
Peter Gay The Education of the Senses
Michael
Mason The Making of Victorian Sexuality
Laurie
Bernstein Sonia’s Daughters: Prostitutes
and their Regulation in Imperial
Eric
Hobsbawm Workers