IPH 405 / Anthro 4353 / History 4050

Theory and Methods in the Humanities

History and Anthropology:
Facets of a Complex Dialogue
Instructors
Dr. Mathieu Grenet (mgrenet@wustl.edu)
Dr. Parker VanValkenburgh (nvanval@wustl.edu)

Office Hours
Grenet – Umrath 234 – by appointment
VanValkenburgh – Umrath 233 – by appointment

Course Description
This seminar examines the interplay of theories and methods in anthropological and
historical scholarship, with an emphasis on current inter- and trans- disciplinary
research incorporating archival, ethnographic, and archaeological approaches. We
begin the course by examining the development of history and anthropology as
distinct disciplines and engaging with several major 20th century dialogues between
anthropologists and historians. We move on to examine key topics in contemporary
social and cultural history that draw on anthropological perspectives and works in
social anthropology and anthropological archaeology that incorporate historical
methodologies and approaches - among them, state-society relations, social power,
translation and conversion, subjectivity and the body, and colonialism.

Readings
The majority of readings for the course are articles and book chapters that have been
made available in PDF copy on Telesis. Each of these texts should be read carefully
before each class session, and you should seek to contribute at least one critical
observation, and prepare at least one critical question concerning each reading. Please
bring your own copies of the day’s readings with you to each class session and please
do not use laptops, tablets, and smart phones during seminar. In addition to these
articles, we will read three monographs in full, which have been made available for
purchase at the WashU bookstore:
 Dawdy, Shannon Lee. Building the Devil’s Empire: French Colonial New
Orleans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2008.
 Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: the Cosmos of a Sixteenth-
Century Miller. Trans. John Tedeschi and Anne Tedeschi. New York:
Penguin. 1982.
 Urton, Gary. The History of a Myth: Pacariqtambo and the Origin of the
Inkas. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1990.

Requirements
In addition to active participation in seminar, class requirements consist of one short
presentation introducing and critiquing the readings in one of six course sessions
(10/23; 10/25; 11/6; 11/8; 11/20; 12/4), which will be organized in advance of through
planning meetings with the course instructors; one 6-8 page midterm essay,
responding to a prompt distributed by the course instructors no later than 10/16 and
due 10/23; and a 15-page final research paper (25 pages for graduate students), whose
topic should be chosen in consultation with the course instructors, due on 12/17.

Grading
Participation (including short presentation) 30%
Midterm Essay (due October 23rd) 30%
Final Research Paper (due December 17th) 40%

*For graduate students, final grades will be determined as follows – 30% midterm
essay; 70% final research paper.

Absences
Absences are excused in the case of religious holidays, family emergencies, and
illnesses (the latter with a signed letter from your physician). Each unexcused absence
will result in a subtraction in your cumulative participation grade.

Class Schedule

Introduction
8/28: General introduction

8/30: NO CLASS

Unit 1
9/4: Definitions

Berr, Henri, and Lucien Febvre. “History,” in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences,
dir. Edwin R. A. Seligman and Alvin Johnson. New York: MacMillan, 1937, VII:
357-68.
Williams, Raymond. “Anthropology,” “Culture,” “History,” and “Society” in
Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. New York: Oxford U.P., 1976, p.
87-93.
Bennett, Tony. “Culture,” in New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and
Society, dir. Tony Bennett, Lawrence Grossberg, and Meaghan Morris. Malden
(MA) and Oxford: Blackwell, 2005, p. 63-9.
Schwarz, Bill. “History,” in New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and
Society, dir. Tony Bennett, Lawrence Grossberg, and Meaghan Morris. Malden
(MA) and Oxford: Blackwell, 2005, p. 156-9.

9/6: The “Pre-disciplinary” Age

Thucydides. “Book One,” in The Peloponnesian War. Ed. and trans. Steven
Lattimore. Indianapolis (IN): Hackett Publ. Co., 1998, p. 3-14.
Jacobsen, Thorkild. The Sumerian King List. Chicago (IL): The University of Chicago
Press, 1939, p. 71-127.
Macchiavelli, Niccolò. “Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius” (Preface: The
Value of History), and “The History of Florence” (Preface), in Macchiavelli: The
 Chief Works and Others. Trans. Allan Gilbert. Durham (NC) and London: Duke
U.P., 1989, I: 190-2, and III: 1029-33.

9/11: Enlightenment, scientism, and the emergence of disciplines

Hegel, G.W.F. Selection from the Philosophy of Right, in Introduction to the

Philosophy of History. Indianapolis (IN) and Cambridge: Hackett, 1988, p. 99-106.
Kant, Immanuel. “Ideal for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View,”
in On History, Ed. Lewis White Beck. Upper Saddle River (NJ): Prentice Hall,
2001, p. 11-26.
Stocking, George. “Prologue: A Precipice in Time,” and “The Idea of Civilization
Before the Crystal Palace (1750-1850),” in Victorian Anthropology. New York:
The Free Press, 1987, p. 1-45.

9/13: Marx and Weber

Marx, Karl. “Introduction,” in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.

New York: International Publishers, 1970, p. 188-217.
Weber, Max. “The Logic of Historical Explanation” [1906], in Selections in
translation. Ed. W.G. Runciman. Trans. E. Matthews. Cambridge and London:
Cambridge U.P., 1978, p. 111-31.

9/18: The need for a new history

Collingwood, R.G. “Preliminary Analysis: The Idea of a Philosophy of Something,

and in Particular, of a Philosophy of History” [1927], in The Idea of History.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 335-58.
Benjamin, Walter. “On the Concept of History” [1940], in Selected Writings, 1969, p.
389-411.

9/20: The Annales

Bloch, Marc. “Introduction” and “Historical Criticism,” in The Historian's Craft

[1949]. Ed. Peter Burke. Trans. Peter Putnam. Manchester and New York:
Manchester U.P., 1992, p. 1-16 and 66-113.
Febvre, Lucien. “A New Kind of History” [1949], in A New Kind of History: From
the Writings of Lucien Febvre. Ed. Peter Burke. Trans. K. Folka. New York:
Harper & Row, 1973, p. 27-43.

9/25: History, anthropology, and the social sciences

Kuper, Adam. “Culture and Civilization: French, German, and English Intellectuals,
1930-1958,” and “The Social Science Account: Talcott Parsons and the American
Anthropologists,” in Culture: The Anthropologist's Account. Cambridge (Mass.):
Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 23-74.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. “The Structural Study of Myth,” in Structural Anthropology.
Trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf. New York: Basic Books,
1963, p. 202-28.

9/27: Crisis and responses

Ortner, Sherry. “Theory in Anthropology Since the 1960’s,” Comparative Studies in

Society and History 26, 1 (1984): 126-66.
Boas, Franz. “The Aims of Anthropological Research” [1970], in Race, Language
and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, p. 423-59.
Fabian, Johannes. “Language, history, and anthropology” [1971], in Time and the
Work of Anthropology: Critical Essays, 1971-1991. Chur (Switzerland) and
Philadelphia: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1991, p. 3-29.

10/2: From experiment to paradigm: the Geertzian moment

Geertz, Clifford. “Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” Daedalus 101 (1972): 1-37.
Roseberry, William. “Balinese Cockfights and the Seduction of Anthropology.”
Social Research 49, 4 (1982): 1013-28.
Sewell, William H., Jr. “The Concept(s) of Culture,” and “History, Synchrony, and
Culture: Reflections on the Work of Clifford Geertz,” in Logics of History. Social
Theory and Social Transformation. Chicago-London: The University of Chicago
Press, 2005, p. 152-196.

10/4: Historical anthropology I

Sahlins, Marshall. “Supplement to the Voyage of Cook; or, le calcul sauvage” and
“Other Times, Other Customs: The Anthropology of History,” in Islands of
History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985, p. 1-72.
Cohn Bernard S. “History and Anthropology: The State of the Play,” Comparative
Studies in Society and History 22, 2 (1980): 198-221.
Skinner, Quentin. “Introduction: The Return of Grand Theory.” In The Return of
Grand Theory in the Human Sciences, dir. Quentin Skinner. Cambridge and New
York: Cambridge U.P., 1990, p. 1-20.

10/9: Historical anthropology II

Medick, Hans. “Historical Anthropology: Some Misunderstandings and Basic

Assumptions,” Focaal 26/27 (1996): 61-64.
Cohen, David W. “Historical Anthropology: Discerning the Rules of the Game,”
Focaal 26/27 (1996): 65-67.
Dirks, Nicholas. “Is Vice Versa? Historical Anthropologies and Anthropological
Histories.” In The Historical Turn in the Human Sciences, dir. Terrance
McDonald. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996, p. 17-51.

10/11: Microhistory and the challenges of cultural anthropology

Cerutti Simona. “Microhistory: Social Relations Versus Cultural Models? Some

Reflections on Stereotypes and Historical Practices.” In Between Sociology and
 History: Essays on Microhistory, Collective Action, and Nation-Building, dir.
Anna-Maija Castrén, Markku Lonkila, and Matti Peltonen, Helsinki: S.K.S., 2004,
p. 17-40.
Ginzburg Carlo. “Checking the Evidence: The Judge and the Historian,” Critical
Inquiry 18, 1 (1991): 79-92.

10/16: Global histories and anthropologies

Tsing, Anna L. “Introduction” and “Nathural Universals and the Global Scale” in
Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2005, p. 1-20 and 88-112.
Wolf, Eric R. “Introduction,” in Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley:
Univ. California Press, 1982, p. 3-72.

10/18: NO CLASS

Unit 2

10/23: The Idea of Civilization

*** MIDTERM ESSAY DUE ***

Toynbee, Arnold. “Introduction,” in A Study of History. Abridgement of Volumes I-VI.

New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1956, p. 1-47.
Huntington, Samuel. “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72, 2 (1993): 22-
49.

10/25: Locating power

Bloch, Marc. “Introduction” and “The sacred and miraculous aspects of royalty from
the beginning of the touch for scrofula up to the Renaissance,” in The Royal
Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France [1924]. Trans. J. E.
Anderson. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1973, p. 1-8 and 108-50.
Kantorowicz, Ernst. “Introduction” and “Chapter 1: The Problem: Plowden’s
Reports” in The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology.
Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1957, p. 3-24.

10/30 and 11/1: “High” and “popular” cultures

MONOGRAPH - Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a
Sixteenth-Century Miller. Trans. John and Anne Tedeschi. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1980.

11/6: Society and the state

Clastres, Pierre. “Exchange and Power: Philosophy of the Indian Chieftainship,” “The
Duty to Speak,” and “Society Against the State” [1974], in Society Against the
State: The Leader as Servant and the Humane Uses of Power Among the Indians
 of the Americas. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Urizen Books, 1977, p. 19-37,
128-31, and 159-86.
Benton, Lauren. “Legal Spaces of Empire: Piracy and the Origins of Ocean
Regionalism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 47, 4 (2005): 700-24.

11/8: Subjectivity and the Body

Sawday, Jonathan. “The Autoptic Vision” and “The Renaissance Body: From
Colonization to Invention” in The Body Emblazoned. Dissection and the Human
Body in Renaissance Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1995, p. 1-38
Sinha, Mrinalini. “Introduction,” Colonial Masculinity. Manchester: University of
Manchester Press, 1995, p. 1-32.

11/13 and 15: Colonialism

MONOGRAPH - Dawdy, Shannon Lee. Building the Devil's Empire: French

Colonial New Orleans. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press,
2008.

11/20: Spatial History and Urban Studies

Cummins, Thomas B.F. “Forms of Andean Colonial Towns, Free Will, and
Marriage,” in The Archaeology of Colonialism, dir. Claire Lyons and John K.
Papadopoulos. Los Angeles (CA): Getty Publications, 2002, p. 199-240.
Harvey, David. “Postmodernism and the City: Architecture and Urban Design,” in
The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990, p. 66-98.

11/22: NO CLASS - Thanksgiving

11/27 and 29: Historicity and Mythopraxis

MONOGRAPH - Urton, Gary. The History of a Myth: Pacariqtambo and the Origins
of the Inkas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.

12/4: The Challenge to Ethnocentrism

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Two Histories of Capital.” In Provincializing Europe:

Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2000, p. 47-71. [available online at:
http://catalog.wustl.edu/search~S2?/aChakrabarty
%2C+Dipesh./achakrabarty+dipesh/3%2C1%2C0%2CB/frameset&FF=achakrabar
ty+dipesh&14%2C%2C17]
Borchgrevink, Axel. “Silencing Language. Of Anthropologists and Interpreters,”
Ethnography 4, 1 (2003): 95-121.

12/6: Roundtable and General Discussion

*** FINAL RESEARCH PAPERS DUE 12/17 ***