To accommodate the Dittrick Museum talk, I’ve rescheduled some of the readings and due dates slightly. Please check the reading schedule page to make sure you know when everything needs to be read and everything is due.
For Tuesday, 8 November 2011
Posted by Robert Shelton
on November 4, 2011
3 comments
Review Weedon–What is subjectivity? Why is the concept Weedon describes relevant to gender (and other) studies?
Review Scott–What is her take on theories of gender common when she wrote this? What does she propose as an alternative?
Appleby, Hunt, Jacob, Telling the Truth about History, ( New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1995). Entire book.–For class (posting is unnecessary), why the title? What is their main point? Do they believe it is possible to do history? Why?
Historian Humor
Posted by Robert Shelton
on October 27, 2011
2 comments
Q: How many historians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: There is a great deal of debate on this issue. Up until the mid-20th century, the accepted answer was ‘one’: and this Whiggish narrative underpinned a number of works that celebrated electrification and the march of progress in light-bulb changing. Beginning in the 1960s, however, social historians increasingly rejected the ‘Great Man’ school and produced revisionist narratives that stressed the contributions of research assistants and custodial staff. This new consensus was challenged, in turn, by women’s historians, who criticized the social interpretation for marginalizing women, and who argued that light bulbs are actually changed by department secretaries. Since the 1980s, however, postmodernist scholars have deconstructed what they characterize as a repressive hegemonic discourse of light-bulb changing, with its implicit binary opposition between ‘light’ and ‘darkness,’ and its phallogocentric privileging of the bulb over the socket, which they see as colonialist, sexist, and racist. Finally, a new generation of neo-conservative historians have concluded that the light never needed changing in the first place, and have praised political leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher for bringing back the old bulb. Clearly, much additional research remains to be done.
Calendar
Posted by Robert Shelton
on August 29, 2011
No comments
The Google calendar that I’m using for this course blog can only be accessed, apparently, from the main Table of Contents page. So if you click on the Calendar post from any of the other categories such as Comments by Section you will get a blank screen. The Calendar dates are subject to change, but I will announce in class well in advance. The due dates are least likely to change. The reading assignments are much more fluid–you should consult the Readings Assignments section for updates.