Introduction to Intellectual History: Approaches and Methods - JMMZ253

• Title: Introduction to Intellectual History: Approaches and Methods
• Guaranteed by: Department of Russian and East European Studies (23-KRVS)
• Faculty: Faculty of Social Sciences
• Actual: from 2019
• Semester: winter
• E-Credits: 6
• Examination process: winter s.:
• Hours per week, examination: winter s.:1/1, Ex [HT]
• Capacity: unknown / unknown (15)
• Min. number of students: 5
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: not taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment; priority enrollment if the course is part of the study plan
• Guarantor: doc. Adrian Brisku, Ph.D.
• Is incompatible with: JTB301

Annotation

Last update: doc. Adrian Brisku, Ph.D. (16.09.2019)

Intellectual history is an interdisciplinary subject in historical studies dealing with understanding and reconstructing various ideas, including those in political thought, as emerging and evolving in the texts produced in their various historical contexts. The task of students and scholars of intellectual history is to engage in a reconstructive understanding of these ideas by also considering their contextual strengths and shortcomings. Each session in this course covers a different approach highlighting different underlying questions posed, sources used, and argumentative strategies deployed.

Aim of the course

Last update: doc. Adrian Brisku, Ph.D. (16.09.2019)

The aim of the course to train students in understanding how to conduct interdisciplinary research in intellectual history whereby many ideas are analysed (approaches, strategies, sources) in several disciplines history and philosophy, history and social sciences, cultural and political history.   

Course completion requirements

Last update: doc. Adrian Brisku, Ph.D. (16.09.2019)

REQUIREMENTS

1) Attendance is mandatory as the course is designed as a seminar where substantial student participation is needed.

2) For each class, a position paper of around 300 words should be prepared. Position papers should address reading for particular class and should be done individually and not as a group effort.

3) Students to prepare a one-page, single-spaced paper for the last day workshop laying out and justifying his/her approach in relation to the seminar readings.

4) Final paper should cover one of the themes of the course, to be agreed with the course instructor. It should be up to 2500 words, submitted electronically on the last week of the course.  

5) Active class participation - 30%, position papers - 30% and final paper - 40%.

 

COURSE EVALUTION

A - "výborně - A" - "excellent - A"
B - "výborně - B" - "excellent - B"
C - "velmi dobře - C" - "very good - C"
D - "velmi dobře - D" - "very good - D"
E - "dobře - E" - "good - E"
F - "neprospěl/a - F" - "fail - F"

For more detail on grading see dean's provision https://www.fsv.cuni.cz/opatreni-dekanky-c-172018aj

Literature

Last update: doc. Adrian Brisku, Ph.D. (16.09.2019)

READING ASSIGNMENT

1. What is Intellectual History?

• Peter Gordon, ‘What is Intellectual History? A Frankly Partisan Introduction to a Frequently Misunderstood Field’, pp. 1-19.

Further reading(s)

• Anthony Grafton, ‘The History of Ideas: Precept and Practice, 1950-2000 and Beyond,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 67, No. 1, 2006, pp. 1-32.

 

2. Arthur O. Lovejoy’s Discipline of the History of Ideas

• Arthur Lovejoy, ‘Introduction: The Study of the History of Ideas’ in The Great Chain of Being, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1936, pp. 3-23.

Further reading(s)

• Arthur Lovejoy, ‘The Genesis of the Idea in Greek Philosophy: The Three Principles’ in The Great Chain of Being, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1936, pp. 24-66.

• Arthur Lovejoy, ‘The Outcome of History and its Moral’ in The Great Chain of Being, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1936, pp. 315-334.

 

3. The Idea of History and Historicism

• Georg G. Iggers, ‘Historicism: The History and Meaning of the Term’, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 56, 1995, pp. 129-152.

• David Carr, ‘The Metaphysics of History and Its History’, in Experience and History(New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 78-104. 

Further reading(s)

• Wilhelm von Humboldt, ‘On Historians Task’, History and Theory, Vol. 6. No. 1, (1967), pp. 57-71.

 

4. Hermeneutics and Hans Georg Gadamer

• Jean Grondin, ‘Gadamer’s Basic Understanding of Understanding’, in Robert J Dostal (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to GadamerCambridge 2002, pp. 36-51.

Further reading(s)

• H. G. Gadamer, ‘Truth, Method, and Transcendence’, in Truth and Method, pp. 25-44.

 

5. Historical Contextualism and the Cambridge School

• Quentin Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, History and Theory, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1969), pp. 3-53.

·      J. G. A. Pocock, ‘The Reconstruction of Discourse: Towards the Historiography of Political Thought’, MLN, Vol. 96, No. 5, Comparative Literature, 1981, pp. 959-980.

Further reading(s)

• Quentin Skinner, ‘The Principles of Lutheranism’, in The Foundation of Modern Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010 [1978], pp. 3-19.

 

6. History of Concepts (Begriffsgeschichte)

• Reinhart Koselleck, ‘Begriffsgeschichte and Social History’, in Futures Past:

On the Semantics of Historical Time [New York, 2004], pp. 75-92.

Further reading(s)

• Reinhart Koselleck, ‘Some Questions Regarding the Conceptual History of ‘Crisis’, in The Practice of Conceptual History, Stanford, 2002, pp. 236-48.

 

7. Comparative History Approach

• Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers, ‘The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 22, No. 2, 1980, pp. 174-197.

Further reading(s)

• Reinhart Koselleck, ‘Three Bürgerlische Worlds’, in Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, New York, 2004, pp. 209-17.

• Adrian Brisku, ‘From Empire to Independence: Europe as the Future’, Bittersweet Europe: Albanian and Georgian Discourses on Europe, 1878-2008, Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 28-72.

 

8. Epistemic Order and Historical Epistemology

• Sara Mills, Michael Foucault, London, Routledge, 2003, Chapter 3, ‘Discourse’ pp. 53-66.

Further reading(s)

• Michael Foucault, ‘The Deployment of Sexuality’, Part Four, in The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality 1, Penguin, 1978, pp. 75-115.

 

9. Martin Jay’s Synoptic Content Analysis

• Lloyd Kramer, ‘Martin Jay and the Dialectics of Intellectual History’ in Warren Breckman (eds.), Modernist Imaginations: Intellectual History and Critical Theory, New York, Berghahn Books, 2009, introductory chapter

Further reading(s)

• Samuel Moyen, ‘Imaginary Intellectual History”, in Darrin M. McMahon and Samuel Moyen (eds), Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History(Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 112-130.

 

10. Rethinking Intellectual History

• Dominick LaCapra, ‘Rethinking Intellectual History and Reading Texts’ in Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, pp. 23-72.

Further reading(s)

• Hayden White, Metahistory, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1975, introductory chapter.

 

11. Global Intellectual History

• Donald R Kelly, ‘Intellectual History in a Global Age’, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 66, No. 2, 2005, pp. 155-167.

Further reading(s)

• Arif Dirlik, ‘Is there History after Eurocentrism? Globalism, Postcolonialism, and Disavowal of History’, in Postmodernity’s Historical Legacies: The Past as Legacy and Project, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Inc., 2000, pp. 63-98.

• Andrew Sartori, ‘The Resonance of Culture: Framing a Problem in Global Concept-History’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 47, No. 4. 2005, pp. 676-699.

12. Workshop. Revisiting Methods and Approaches in Intellectual History

Teaching methods

Last update: doc. Adrian Brisku, Ph.D. (16.09.2019)

The course is seminar-based which means that the lecturer will open up the discussion on the reading material of the week by laying out the main concepts and questions which will be followed by students' interventions and analytical discussions. 

Syllabus

Last update: doc. Adrian Brisku, Ph.D. (28.08.2018)

1. What is Intellectual History?

2. Arthur O. Lovejoy’s Discipline of the History of Ideas

3. Historicism. Ranke and Rankeans

4. Hermeneutics. Hans Georg Gadamer

5. Historical Contextualism and the Cambridge School

6. History of Concepts

7. Comparative History Approach

8. Epistemic Order and Historical Epistemology

9. Martin Jay’s Synoptic Content Analysis

10. Rethinking Intellectual History

11. Global Intellectual History

12. Workshop. Revisiting Methods and Approaches in Intellectual History