Writing the Past: Historiography, Narrative, and Craft
This class has not yet been taught. 15 students maximum, once-per-week seminar.
This seminar class is designed for advanced undergraduates or as an introductory course for graduate students who are particularly interested in the craft of writing history, rather than getting up to speed on the current state of their respective fields. It aspires to broaden the minds of students when it comes to thinking about what history is or can be, and to encourage rigorous, yet creative writing skills as they proceed through the semester towards a single, culminating project or presentation. To that end, it combines readings from past centuries as well as current radical experiments with historical form, historical fiction, and various forms of media. It contains an expanded version of the core policies which I implement in all of my classrooms, as well as providing institutional policies, links, and resources.
Click here to view a PDF of the full syllabus.
Early Modern Europe, 1500-1789
This course has not yet been taught, but is modeled on one for which I was a Teaching Assistant twice at Barnard College. My 40 students met in weekly recitation sections for 75 minutes.
This course functions as an introduction for early undergraduates to the major themes of European history circa 1500-1789. Its design is meant to expose some of the major myths of this period and space of history – exploding the uniqueness and moral worth of the ‘Renaissance’ or the ‘Enlightenment,’ for example – and broaden students’ understanding of Europe’s violent entanglements with the wider world in the first age of globalization. In doing so, it attempts to explode European (and in a sense Anglo-European/American) exceptionalism, and emphasize the contingency, chaos, and manic energy of early modern Europe as just another part of the world which forced its way into political and economic prominence. Under the guidance of the professor and TAs, students will also read several major works of European historical literature (many of which focus on forgotten or previously ‘lost’ narratives of common peoples, women, and religious dissidents) and practice major techniques of historical research and writing as they reflect on the course’s themes and content.
Click here to view a PDF of the full syllabus.
Coming soon: Early Modern European Revolutions
This is a course in development.
This course introduces students to a wide array of revolutions which paved the way for later ‘world’ Revolutions such as the American or the French, but are studied far less frequently. These movements include the Dutch Revolt, the Fronde in France, the English Civil War, and the resurgence of studies of the Haitian Revolution.