Introductory description

This module will be the core first-year module for students taking VQ32 English & History. History and Textuality explores the limits of history and narrative by considering subjects that have traditionally said to be ahistorical, such as the emotions, sensation, the “primitive,” and the non-human world.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

TERM 1
1: Introduction to the module and its objectives

UNIT 1: What is History?
Core texts: Selections from Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Carlyle, The
French Revolution (1837), and Michelet, History of the French Revolution (1847)
2: ARCHIVES: Farge, The Allure of the Archives; Steedman, Dust: The Archive and
Cultural History
3: EVIDENCE: Veyne, Writing History; Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French
Revolution; Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social
Imagination
4: METHODS: Braudel, On History; Koselleck, Futures Past
5: CHALLENGES: James, The Black Jacobins; Gilroy, The Black Atlantic

UNIT 2: What is Literary History?
Core text: Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
7: NARRATIVE and HISTORY: Watt, The Rise of the Novel, Michael McKeon, The
Origins of the English Novel; Butler, “Frankenstein and Radical Science”
8: HISTORICAL FORMALISMS: Gallagher and Greenblatt, Practicing New
Historicism; Hacking, Historical Ontology; Armstrong, “A Gothic History of
the British Novel”; Kramnick and Nersessian, “Form and Explanation”
9: HISTORICAL MATERIALISMS: Lukács, The Historical Novel, Williams, Marxism
and Literature; Jameson, “Marxism and Historicism,” Chakrabarty, Provincializing
Europe
10: CRITIQUE: Michel Foucault, “Was ist Aufklärung?”; Judith Butler, “What is
Critique? An Essay on Foucault’s Virtue”; Felski, The Limits of Critique

UNIT 3: What is Cultural Memory?
Core text: Alison Bechdel, Fun Home
11: INHERITANCE: Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition; Nora, “Between Memory and History”; Thompson, The Voice of the Past 12: MEMORIALIZATION: Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country; Doss, Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America; Crimp, “The Spectacle of Mourning” and “Portraits of People with AIDS” Week
13: MEDIATION: Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory; Rosenstone, Visions of the Past; Bell and Gray, “History on Television”
14: TRAUMA: LaCapra, “Trauma, Absence, Loss”; Suleiman, Crises of Memory and the Second World War; Eyerman, Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity
15: COLLECTIVE MEMORY: Assman, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization; Dawdy, Patina: A Profane Archaeology; film screening of Daughters of the Dust (dir. Julie Dash) UNIT 4: Where is History Going? Core Text: W.G. Sebald, Rings of Saturn
17: THE SENSUAL TURN: Taussig, “Tactility and Distraction,” Agamben, “Notes on Gesture”; Berlant, “Thinking about Feeling Historical”
18: THE SENSORY TURN: Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity; Smith, Sensing the Past
19: THE NONHUMAN TURN: Callon, “Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay”; Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses”; Roberts, Mirror-Travels 20: THE DIGITAL TURN: Guldi and Armitage, The History Manifesto; Moretti, Graphs, Maps, and Trees TERM 3 UNIT 5: The Angel of History Core text: Octavia Butler, Kindred (1979)
21: Benjamin, “On the Concept of History”; Trouillot, Silencing the Past
22: Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations; Fasolt, The Limits of History Week 23: Module review

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• To demonstrate a familiarity with the organizing questions of historical and literary historical scholarship; to gain an understanding of the place of literary history in historical writing (and vice versa); to conduct a comparative assessment of the two disciplines; to understand the bases for critiques of western historiographic and aesthetic traditions; to situate new historical practices within these traditions.

Indicative reading list

• Selections from Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Carlyle, The
  French Revolution (1837), and Michelet, History of the French Revolution (1847)
• Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
• Alison Bechdel, Fun Home
• W.G. Sebald, Rings of Saturn
• Octavia Butler, Kindred (1979)

Subject specific skills

Demonstrate a familiarity with the organizing questions of historical scholarship; Demonstrate a familiarity with the organizing questions of literary historical scholarship
Demonstrate an understanding of the place of literary history in historical writing. Demonstrate an understanding of the place of literary history in literary studies
Explain 2-3 reasons for critiques of western historiographic and aesthetic traditions

Transferable skills

Conduct a comparative assessment of the two disciplines
Situate new historical practices within these traditions