Web-app.usc.edu
Professor Marjorie Becker
SOS 172
mbecker@usc.edu
Office Hours: Contact me by email, Monday 9—11
and by appointment
History 201
Approaches to History
History has been defined as the exploration of change over time. It also has been understood as “everything that has ever happened to anyone.” Most professional historians have created historical contexts surrounding and prompting specific individuals to engage in specific kinds of behavior at specific places and times. It also is the case that there are multiple approaches to the study of people’s changing (or unchanging) behavior in time, in space. These approaches include, and are not limited to, political approaches, intellectual approaches, micro-historical approaches, regional approaches, national approaches, social approaches. Historians also write about and have developed approaches to gender, ethnicity, race, age, religion; they have considered approaches to art, literature, food, music, dance and more.
As professional historians approach their profession in varied ways, I this class we will trace some of that variety, considering cultural history, political history, intellectual history, family history, gender history, racial history, micro-histories. Other histories—histories of music, of the emotions, of the physical world, too, might crowd their ways into our discussions and assessments.
Specific attention will be paid to the formal mechanics of history. In this class we will consider how professional historians discover and then assess bodies of information. We will think about historians’ decisions about how to communicate their findings. We will pay particular attention to the conventional form in which historians conduct research and share their results. We will also consider alternative approaches to these conventional practices. Students will also write papers based on specific approaches to history, most particularly to family history.
Course requirements include completion of all required reading by the day it is required, mandatory discussion of all texts, completion of reading diaries, a midterm, a final, and an 8 to 10-page paper. All reading must be completed by the day assigned as it will be discussed in class. The paper and diary must be completed by their due dates; late papers will be penalized one half grade a day. Grading will be based on the following 100-point scale:
Discussion and diary responses: 40 points
Midterm: 20 points
Paper: 20 points
Final: 20 points
Please make sure to get the assigned books. I ordered all of the assigned books at the USC bookstore.
Academic integrity: Let me remind you of the serious offense of plagiarism, the act of stealing or passing off the ideas, writing, thoughts, words, or work of another person as your own. The recommended penalty for plagiarism on a paper or any other form of cheating is a grade of F for the course, at a minimum. If you are not familiar with what constitutes plagiarism, please consult the Trojan Integrity Guide located at http:usc.studentafrairs/SJACS/forms/tig/pdf.
Students with disabilities: Any student requesting accommodations based on a disability is required to register with Disability Services and Programs (DSP) every semester. A letter of verification for approved accommodations can be obtained from DSP. Please deliver this letter to Professor Becker as early in the semester as possible. DSP is located in STU 301, the number is 213-740-0776. DSP is open from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Note about the special circumstances surrounding this semester. As you know, were it not for the deadly pandemic, this class would be an in-person, lecture and discussion seminar. Unfortunately, Covid and the university’s decisions, have compelled us to experience this class (and one another) through Zoom. Like most scholars, I have received intense training in often-life threatening research in foreign archives, have developed a specific approach to my subject: the Latin American poor, Latin American females, Latin American indigenous peoples, the Mexican revolution and counter-revolution, innovative historical writing, poetry and poetics. All of that usually informs my teaching, as does my deep training in courtesy to others. This semester I assume there will be tech problems—there often are—but I also believe that together, we will figure out ways to think about, read about, discuss and learn, approaches to approaches to history.
Schedule (Subject to modification)
8/18 Welcome and introductions
Discussion: what is history? How do we experience it? Why does it matter? How do we know what we know about history? How have professional historians communicated what they have learned about history/
8/20 The morality of “exotic” military history.
Reading and discussion: Inga Clendinnen, “The Cost of Courage in Aztec Society,” in Inga Clendinnen, The Cost of Courage in Aztec Society, pp. 6—27
8/25 How is “exotic” military history gendered? How do we understand courage? According to Clendinnen how did Aztecs understand their gods? How did their gods view them? What was courage to the Aztecs and why was it so costly?
Reading and discussion: Clendinnen, “The Cost of Courage in Aztec Society,” pp. 27—48
8/27 When scholars refer to “the other” what do they mean? How does Inga Clendinnen characterize the unseen, long dead historical cultures of the sixteenth century Spanish “conquerors,” the Tlaxcalan indigenous peoples of Central Mexico, and the Aztecs of Central Mexico? How did Europeans understand war? How as the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs conventionally been understood?
Reading and discussion, Clendinnen, “Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty,” In The Cost of Courage in Aztec Society, pp. 49—64
9/1How did Aztecs and Tlaxcalans understand and practice warfare? What was “fierce and unnatural” about the conquest of Mexico?
Reading and discussion: Clendinnen, “Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty,” pp. 65—90.
9/3 How do historians conventionally assess and communicate history? What are the pros and cons of that approach? How might a less conventional approach be more democratic? How do historians understand context and what is the context for Setting the Virgin on Fire? How do historians understand thesis, and what is the thesis of Virgin?
Reading and discussion: Marjorie Becker, Setting the Virgin on Fire: Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán Peasants and the Redemption of the Mexican Revolution pp. xiiii—p.10
9/8What is cultural history? How does Becker define culture? What was the culture of “purity and redemption?” How was that culture gendered? How did Michoacán priests and laypeople understand “La Purísima?” What did she provide for men? For women? How did the culture surrounding her seek to control female sexuality and voice? Describe the work of mestiza women.Who were the Tarascan indigenous people of Michoaán? What were the roles of Tarascan men and women? Who was Primo Tapia, and how did he attempt to bring the Mexican revolution to his Michoacán village?
Reading and discussion, Becker, Virgin on Fire, pp. 10—39
9/10 What roles do biography play in history? Who were the Michoacán revolutionaries? What was unique about these individuals? Why were they socially isolated? How did they hope to change the world? How is language used to describe them? And how did the revolutionaries understand Michoacán indigenous people? How did they understand mestizas/os? How did they wish to change these groups?
Reading, discussion, and interviews, Becker, Virgin on Fire, pp. 39—76
9/15 Revolution through dance
What did Cardenistas mean by revolution? What parts of rural life did they try to change and how? How was their approach physical and how was it gendered? Describe the bonfire and the dance inside the church? Why did the women dance, and what did they communicate through their dance?
Reading, and discussion, Becker, Virgin on Fire, pp. 77—101.
9/17 Who were the Tarascans? How did the Cardenistas attempt to change their lives? What is historical empathy? What are the pros and cons of historical empathy as an approach to history? Who was Ernesto Prado? How did he approach revolution? What was his attitude toward the Catholic church?
Reading and discussion, Becker, Virgin on Fire, 102—115
9/22 The Michoacán resistance movement
In response to all of these efforts to change their schooling, their religion, their ability to own and farm land, gender relations, hygiene, leadership, Michoacanos responded in an array of ways. Describe the ways they accepted some aspects of the Cardenista effort to change them. Describe their responses to the land reform. To rural boss men? To the “socialist” schooling. To the Cardenista approaches to the church? To efforts to remake the indigenous people. To efforts to transform female behavior.
How did the people of Michoacán change Mexico’s modern history? What remained unchanged?
Reading and discussion, Becker, Virgin on Fire, all.
9/24When Historians say “social history” to what approach do they refer? What is working class black history from “way, way below?”
Reading and discussion, Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels:Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class, pp. 1—34
9/29 Approaches to Race Histories of Politics and Pleasure
Reading and discussion: Kelley, Race Rebels, pp. 35—55
10/1 An approach to the history of transportation
How was space racialized? How were those spatial decisions contested? How can historians see and assess normalized power relationships?
Reading and discussion: Kelley, Race Rebels, pp. 55—73
10/6 Family Histories How do historians approach the personal? In what ways can family histories be political? Geographic? Religious? Gendered? How is Rosenstone’s approach to historical writing unconventional?
Reading and discussion: Robert Rosenstone, The Man Who Swam into History, pp. ix—80
10/8How do family histories reveal and conceal personal lives?
Reading and discussion: Rosenstone, The Man Who Swam into History, pp. 81—136
10/13 What does Rosenstone teach us about immigration history? About U.S. history? About Jewish history? About gendered history?
Reading and discussion: Rosenstone, The Man Who Swam into History, all
Midterm directions
10/15 Take home midterm due
10/20 Fiction as history. How do novelists create context? Characters Dialogue? Experiences in time? Meaning?
Reading and discussion, Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried 1—144
10/22 How does O’Brien teach war history? The histories of love?
Reading and discussion, O’Brien, The Things They Carried, all
10/27 Fiction and the history of capitalism
What is the setting for this novel? Who are the characters? How are they described and what do they do?
Reading and discussion: Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of the Lion, pp, 7—143
10/29 How does gender work in In the Skin of the Lion? What about class relations?
Reading and discussion, Ondaatje, In the Skin of the Lion, all.
11/3 Poetic History What are the histories of US indigenous peoples? What does Joy Harjo reveal about those histories through her poetry?
How do poetic tools: images, internal life, emotional language, colors, taste, touch, sensuality, violence reveal historical realities?
Reading and discussion, Joy Harjo, Am American Sunrise, pp. 3—59
11/5 Poetics and History: Consider the formal approaches the historians you have read used. Compare and contrast that to Harjo’s formal approach.
Reading and discussion: An American Sunrise, all
11/10 Family Histories
Please share key elements of the family histories you have written.
11/12 Family Histories
Key elements of your family histories
Instructions for the take-home final
Final: Tuesday, 11/17 2--4
Book List:
Marjorie Becker, Setting the Virgin on Fire: Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán Peasants and the Redemption of the Mexican Revolution
Inga Clendinnen, The Cost of Courage in Aztec Society
Joy Harho, An American Sunrise
Robin Kelley, Race Rebels
Tim O’Brian, The Things They Carried
Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of the Lion
Robert Rosenstone, The Man Who Swam into History
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