Postmodern History Theory

Mary Fulbrook, Historical Theory (2002), chapters 1-3 Keith Jenkins, On What is History (1995), chapter 1 Beverley Southgate, History: What and Why (1996), chapter 1 Callum .G.Brown, Postmodernism for Historians (2004) S. Berger, H. Feldner and K. Passmore, Writing History: Theory and Practice (2003) A. Munslow, The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies (2000), entries on ‘facts’, ‘evidence’, ‘Elton’. ‘empiricism’, ‘historicism’, ‘objectivity’, ‘Reconstructionist history’ 'The Empiricists' chapter 1 in A.Green and K.Troup, The Houses of History R.J.Evans, In Defence of History, chapter 3, 'Historians and their Facts', pp.75-102. Keith Jenkins, Why History? (1999) pp.91-112 for a critique of Evans. C.G.Brown, Postmodernism for Historians, chapter 1 ‘Empiricism’ J. Tosh, ‘The Limits of historical knowledge’ in Tosh, The Pursuit of History pp, 164203 J . Tosh, Historians on History, part I, ‘Fidelity to the sources’ (Galbraith and Elton). E. Tonkin, ‘History and the Myth of Realism’, in R. Samuel and P. Thompson (eds), The Myths We Live By (1990) R. Samuel, ‘Unofficial knowledge’ in R. Samuel, Theatres of Memory (1994), pp. 348. Additional Reading: P. Burke, ‘History of events and the revival of narrative’, in P. Burke (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing (2001) A. Munslow, Deconstructing History (1997), chapter 1 Introduction. M. Fulbrook, Historical Theory, chapter 6, ‘Looking for Clues’ K. Jenkins, Rethinking History (1991), chapter 2. ‘On some questions and answers’ L. Jordanova, History in Practice (2000), chapter 4 ‘The Status of Historical Knowledge’ C. Ginzburg, ‘Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method’, History Workshop Journal 9 (1980), 5-36, reprinted as ‘Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm’, in Ginzburg, Myths, Emblems, Clues (London, 1990), pp.96-127 C. Ginzburg, ‘Checking the Evidence: the Judge and the Historian’, Critical Inquiry 18 (1991), 79-82 Sources: Interview with Simon Schama on the relationship between history and fiction http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/murder/sfeature/sf_schama.html and see S. Schama Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations) (1991) in which Schama imaginatively reconstructions two events: the death of General Wolfe at Quebec, and a murder in the family of Wolfe's great chronicler, the Bostonian Francis Parkman. Key Reading: Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives (1987) Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, Mass., 1983) Hayden White, 'The Fictions of Factual Representation' in Green and Troup eds, The Houses of History R. Barthes, ‘The discourse of history’, in K. Jenkins (ed.)., The Postmodern History Reader (1997) C.G.Brown, Postmodernism for Historians, chapter 5 ‘Text’ R.Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and other Episodes in French Cultural History (London, 1984) Full text available at:

http://www.geocities.com/pashathecat/History/Cat_Massacre.html and read in conjunction with: R.Chartier, Cultural History: Between Practices and Representations (1988), pp. 95111. James Fernandez 'Historians tell Tales: of Cartesian cats and Gallic Cockfights', Journal of Modern History 60, 1988, 113-27 JSTOR Additional Reading: R.Samuel and P.Thomson, The Myths we Live By (London 1990) Hayden White,'Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth' in S.Friedlander (ed), Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the 'Final Solution' (Cambridge, 1992) R.Finlay,'The Refashioning of Martin Guerre', American Historical Review 1988, pp.552-71 JSTOR ‘Gender and History’ chapter 10 in Green and Troup, eds, The Houses of History J. Alberti, Gender and the Historian (2002) J. W. Scott ‘Gender: a useful category of historical analysis, American Historical Review, 91, (1986),1053-1075 JSTOR J. Hoff, ‘Gender as a Postmodern Category of Paralysis’, Women’s History Review 3 (1994), 149-69 JSTOR J. Bennett, ‘Feminism and History’ Gender & History 1 (1989) 251-72 K. Canning, ‘Feminist History After the Linguistic Turn: Historicizing Discourse and Experience’, Signs 19 (1994) S. Gamble (ed). The Routledge Companion to Feminism and Postfeminism (2001) 174-7 - useful section introducing Lacan, Kristeva, Irigaray and French feminism T. Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (1985) chapters 5, 7 8 T. Moi, The Kristeva Reader (1986) 187-214 (‘Women’s time’) and 109-112 (‘Breaching the Thetic; Mimesis’). Make sure you have read Gamble 174-7 and Moi (1985) chs 5 and 8 first. L. Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman trans. G C Gill (1985). This is an exceptionally – and deliberately - fluid text encompassing a critique of Freud, Plato, Aristotle etc. Sample to get some idea of her approach and then look at 353-7 and 191-202. Don’t attempt this before reading either Gamble 184-7 and/or Moi (1985) chs 5 and 7. E. A. Clark ‘The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian After the Linguistic Turn’ Church History 67 (1998) 1-31 C. M. Mooney, Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters (1999), esp. Mooney ‘Voice, Gender and the Portrayal of Sanctity’ and Scott, ‘Mystical Death, Bodily Death: Catherine of Siena and Raymond of Capua on the Mystic’s Encounter with God’. K.Scott, ‘Urban Spaces, Women’s Networks and the Lay Apostolate in the Siena of Catherine Benincasa’, in Creative Women in Medieval and early Modern Italy eds. E. Ann Matter and John Coakley (1994), 105-119 A. Hollywood, Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference and the Demands of History (2002), part 3 R. Bell, Holy Anorexia (1985) C. W. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast : the Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (1987) Additional reading: J. E. Toews, ‘Intellectual History After the Linguistic Turn’ AHR 92 (1987), 879-907

C.W. Bynum, ‘ In praise of Fragments: History in a Comic Mode’, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (1991), 11-26. J. Kelly, Women, History and Theory (1984) an early product of the ‘linguistic turn’ J. Price and. M. Shildrick, Feminist Theory and the Body. A Reader (1999) – useful introduction which highlights the work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler on the body J. Butler, Gender Trouble (1990) a classic text suggesting gender is performative Toril Moi, What is a Woman? (1999) ch. 1, esp. 3-59 C. Beattie, ‘Gender and femininity in medieval England’, in N. Partner, ed. Writing Medieval History (2005), 153-70 - useful not only for the middle ages K. Lochrie , ‘The Language of transgression, flesh and word in mystical discourse’ in Speaking Two Languages, Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies ed A. J. Frantzen (1991) G. Ashton, The Generation of Identity in Late Medieval Hagiography Speaking the Saint (2000) – application of Irigaray and Kristeva to medieval sources L. Roper, Oedipus and the Devil (esp the introduction) (1994) Roland Barthes, Mythologies (London, Vintage, 1993). C.G.Brown, Postmodernism for Historians, see entries in index for ‘Barthes’ and ‘myth’ R.Samuel and P.Thomson, The Myths we Live By (London 1990) A. Calder, The Myth of the Blitz (1992) A. Calder, The People’s War: Britain 1939-1945 (1992) A.Thomson, 'Anzac memories: putting popular memory theory into practice in Australia', in A.Green and K.Troup eds, The Houses of History, chapter 9 P. Summerfield, Reconstructing Women’s Wartime Lives, esp chapter 1. L.Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory: The Cultural Experience of the Turin Working Class, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987. L.Passerini, 'Work, Ideology and consensus under Italian Fascism', History Workshop Journal 12 (1981), 82-108. Julie Cruickshank, ‘Myth as a framework for life stories’, in R. Samuel and P. Thomson eds, The Myths we Live By (London 1990) Anna Green, ‘Individual remembering and collective memory: theoretical presuppositions and contemporary debates’, Oral History 32 2004 Trevor Lummis, Listening to History (1987), chapter 11 'Memory'.