Readings

Required Texts

Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780520063297.

Davis, Natalie. The Return of Martin Guerre. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780674766914.

Demos, John. The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1995. ISBN: 9780679759614.

Hunt, Lynn, et al. Telling the Truth About History. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 1995. ISBN: 9780393312867.

Lee, James Z., and Wang Feng. One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities, 1700-2000. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780674007093.

Lewis, C. S. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780521477352.

Krech, Shepard. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000. ISBN: 9780393321005.

Readings by Class Session

SES # TOPICS READINGS
1 Introduction A Midwife's Tale. (The film version.)
2 Narrative and History The Return of Martin Guerre.
3 Narrative and History (cont.) The Unredeemed Captive.
4 The Annales School Braudel, Fernand. Mediterranean. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1992. ISBN: 9780060159580. (selections)

Hexter, J. H. "Fernand Braudel and the Monde Braudellien." Journal of Modern History 44 (1972): 480-539.

Extra Reading if Interested

Hufton, Olwen. "Fernand Braudel." Past and Present no. 112 (August, 1986): 208-213.
Individual meetings to review research proposals none
5 Gender and History Holy Feast, Holy Fast. pp. 1-186 (and distribute part III amongst the class).
6 The Middle Ages as Fantasy The Discarded Image.

Cantor, Norman. "The Oxford Fantasists." In Inventing the Middle Ages. New York: W. Morrow, 1991.

Selections from Tolkien, J. R. R. "Beowulf and the Critics." (Manuscript dating early 1930s.)
7 The MIT Mix - Or How Does a History Department Work? Dower, John. "Race, Language, and War in Two Cultures." In Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays. New York: New Press, 1993.

Jacobs, Meg. "How About Some Meat?: The Office of Price Administration, Consumption Politics, and State Building from the Bottom Up, 1941-1946." Journal of American History 84, no. 3 (1997).

McCants, Anne. "The Not-So-Merry Widows of Amsterdam, 1740-1782."  Journal of Family History 24, no. 4 (1999).

Perdue, Peter. "Empire and Nation in Comparative Perspective: Frontier Administration in 18th c China."Journal of Early Modern History 5, no. 4 (2001).

Ravel, Jeff. "The Coachman's Bare Rump: an 18th French Cover-up." Unpublished manuscript, 2003.

Ritvo, Harriet. "Race, Breed, and Myths of Origin: Chillingham Cattle as Ancient Britons." Representations 39 (Summer, 1992).
8 Thinking About Doing History Telling the Truth About History.

Tilly, Charles. "How (and What) are Historians Doing?" In American Behavioral Scientist , July–August 1990. pp. 685-711.
9 Environment and History The Ecological Indian. pp. 9-104, and 145-189.
Drafts Due
10 Sunday Field Trip Excursion to Peabody-Essex Museum to tour the Chinese Merchant's House .
11 Demography and History One Quarter of Humanity.
12 Culture and History Darnton, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1985. ISBN: 9780394729275.

Mah, Harold. "Suppressing the Text: The Metaphysics of Ethnographic History in Darnton's Great Cat Massacre." History Workshop 31 (Spring, 1991).
13 Class Presentations