"What is Social History?"
HIST 97K
Subject & Catalog Number
Course Information
Description
“The intellectual historian may (at his risk) pay no attention to economics, the economic historian to Shakespeare, but the social historian who neglects either will not get far. Conversely, while it is extremely improbable that a monograph on provençal poetry will be economic history or one on inflation in the sixteenth century intellectual history, both could be treated in a way to make them social history.” So wrote Eric Hobsbawm in the winter of 1971. Up until then, much academic and popular historical writing tended to the tales of kings and queens, presidents and tycoons, generals and geniuses. But then, the social storms of the 1960s crashed into the universities, unleashing a revolution of sorts in historical writing and thinking. Peasants, prostitutes, slaves, artisans, industrial workers, the poor, and the working class now took center stage. Riots and strikes, protests and criminal trials, families and famines were just some of the new subjects of analysis that aimed to look at history anew, this time “from below.” Social history today takes what is seemingly mundane and people who are seemingly ordinary to explain extraordinary events and see change over time on a different scale and through different causal forces than old histories of the great and the powerful. This seminar examines the central methods, questions, and trends in social history. Students will explore the promise of the capaciousness of social history as well as grapple with the problems—archival, methodological, epistemic—that it poses to its practitioners by engaging with historical, historiographical, and primary source texts.
Course Notes
Required of all History concentrators in the spring term of their sophomore year and open to all secondary field students. This course may not be audited or taken Pass/Fail. It enrolls prior to shopping period through the History concentration. Please contact the DUS in History if you wish to enroll without being a concentrator in History.
Not Available for Cross Registration
