Introduction to Intellectual History: Approaches and Methods - JTB301

• 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 2022 to 2022
• Semester: winter
• E-Credits: 6
• Examination process: winter s.:
• Hours per week, examination: winter s.:1/1, Ex [HT]
• Capacity: 24 / unknown (20)
• Min. number of students: 5
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: 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.
• Teacher(s): doc. Adrian Brisku, Ph.D.
• Class: Courses for incoming students
• Incompatibility : JMMZ253
• Pre-requisite : JTB004, JTB006, JTB010, JTB014

Annotation

Last update: doc. Adrian Brisku, Ph.D. (04.09.2023)

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 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. (04.09.2023)

The goals for this course are to engage students in reconstructive understanding of ideas by considering the latter's contextual strengths and shortcomings and to familiarise them with different approaches highlighting underlying questions posed, sources used, and argumentative strategies deployed. Crucially, it is also to enable the students to deploy such approaches in their academic writing.

Course completion requirements

Last update: doc. Adrian Brisku, Ph.D. (04.09.2023)

REQUIREMENTS

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

2) For every three weeks, a position paper of around 300 words should be prepared, to be submitted in Moodle. Position papers should address a reading for particular class. They should be done individually not as a group effort.

3) On week 12, using a ‘workshop’ format students present & get feedback from the lecturer and course mates on their first draft of their final paper.

4) A final paper of around 2500 words will be uploaded on Moodle with an indicated deadline.  

5) Active class participation –20%, position papers –30%, final paper draft (for the workshop) – 20%, final paper –30%.  

 

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 system see Dean’s provision https://www.fsv.cuni.cz/opatreni-dekanky-c-172018aj

 

Last updated, 4.09.2023

Literature

Last update: doc. Adrian Brisku, Ph.D. (04.09.2023)

READING ASSIGNMENTS

1. Introduction

• Syllabus.

 

2. 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.

 

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 Gadamer Cambridge 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. The ‘International Turn’ & Global Intellectual History

• David Armitage, ‘The international turn in intellectual history’, in Foundations of Modern International Thought (pp. 17-32) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).  doi:10.1017/CBO9781139032940.004

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.

12. Workshop

Teaching methods

Last update: doc. Adrian Brisku, Ph.D. (13.09.2022)

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. The reading material will be accessable in Moodle.  

Syllabus

Last update: doc. Adrian Brisku, Ph.D. (04.09.2023)

   Introduction to Intellectual History: Approaches and Methods (JMMZ253)

Associate Professor Adrian Brisku, PhD

Department of Russian & East European Studies, Charles University  

https://cuni.academia.edu/adrianBrisku

[e-mail]

COURSE DESCRIPTION

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. 

 

1. Introduction

2. What is Intellectual History?

3. The Idea of History and Historicism

4. Hermeneutics and Hans Georg Gadamer

5. Historical Contextualism and the Cambridge School

6. History of Concepts (Begriffsgeschischte)

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

Last updated, 4.9.2023