The
Shape of Modernity
A History of the West from the
Inquisition to the Modern Era
http://www.history.neu.edu/fac/burds/chnru205.htm
HNRU205 Inquiries in Social Science
The History of Dr. Faustus: Original Chapbook first published in Germany
in 1587 by Johann Spies
"If, at last,
you could change the world, what
Would you think yourself too good for?"
Berthold Brecht, The Measure Taken (1930)
Professor Jeffrey
Burds at: j.burds@neu.edu
269 Holmes Hall
Voice: 617-373-2079
Monday, Thursday
Office Hours: Wednesdays,
This is an introductory course on the history of the modern West since 1700, with a special focus on the 100-year period 1848-1945. The course is intended to provide Honors students with a general background of social, political, and cultural developments in the West since the eighteenth century. No prerequisites are required. The course fulfills the University's Diversity requirement.
The unifying theme of this course is the meaning of modernity. We begin from the starting point of the "unheavenly kingdom" of the European Enlightenment, and its ultra-rationalist, ultra-humanist effort to replace religion with science, to supplant transcendent Divinity with Man and Nature as the center of history. This philosophical and cultural world-turned-upside-down was an essential prerequisite to the cataclysmic upheavals of the French Revolution. The course will trace developments through the age of disillusionment and decadence that followed 1789, to the second Industrial Revolution, and a renewed and romantic faith in Progress that characterized the rise of historicism during the first half of the nineteenth century.
This rise of historicism--humans taking over the reins of history (and the grandiose schemes that were developed to explain that set of relationships)--was intrinsically double-edged: the optimism and confidence that accompanied human endeavors to subordinate Nature to human will and technology was always haunted by the specter of what one scholar has referred to as "the terror of history." Our primary task in this course is to survey some of the voices that celebrated, or decried, these developments.
Special supplemental themes in lectures will include discussions of the transition from traditional to modern social relations: changing conceptions of childhood and the family; women and women's changing social roles; death, dying, and the after-life; sexuality; aesthetic tastes and manners; madness and hysteria; witchcraft; imperialism and the Western "civilizing mission"; and social control and punishment.
Course readings will expose students exclusively to original writers and original sources. Besides selected short readings presented as class handouts for discussion in each meeting, all students will read 100-200 pages each from some of the most influential figures in modern Western Civilization: Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Fedor Dostoevsky, Sigmund Freud, Virginia Woolf, and Primo Levi. Each student's knowledge of these required texts will be evaluated in a series of short in-class quizzes. In addition, each student will write two short papers drawing on course readings and/or class presentations. There is no final examination.
Final grades will be calculated with attention to the following formula:
• Regular class attendance: 10 percent
Attendance
is required. No student with five or more unexcused absences will pass this
course. Students with perfect attendance will receive a
5-point bonus on the final semester grade.
• The average of six required quizzes: 50 percent
• Two typed
papers, 6-8 pages each
• Paper One is
due 30 October (On Marx,
• Paper Two is due 11 December (On Freud, Woolf, Levi, Sartre, or negotiated theme): 20 percent
All papers in the course should conform to the History Style Guide,
and all written work should be checked closely for spelling and grammatical
errors. Sloppy work will receive at least one full grade reduction.
A Statement on Academic Honesty
All written work in this course must be the student's own original work. Plagiarism--"the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work"--is a serious violation. Please note that the same shortcuts that make plagiarism so easy in our day also facilitate the instructor's verification of each student's work. In this course, all student work is checked closely for plagiarism. Northeastern University relies on Turnitin technology: "Every paper submitted is returned in the form of a customized Originality Report. Results are based on exhaustive searches of billions of pages from both current and archived instances of the internet, millions of student papers previously submitted to Turnitin, and commercial databases of journal articles and periodicals." The point? If you misuse materials and submit other people's work as your own, you will be caught. Any student caught plagiarizing will automatically FAIL this course, and you will be formally charged for violation of university guidelines on academic honesty.
Northeastern University's Official Policy on Academic Honesty & Integrity
All books are available in low-cost paperback editions at Barnes & Nobles bookstore, and are on Closed Reserve in Snell Library.
*--Charles Darwin,
*--F. M. Dostoevskii, Notes from Underground, Ralph E, Matlaw, Translator. (NAL-Dutton, 1960).
--Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the
*--Primo Levi, Survival in
*--Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (Norton Critical Edition) Paperback, (W W Norton & Co., 1988).
--Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
*--Lev Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
*--Virginia Woolf, Room of One's Own (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1989).
In addition, students are expected to read and
study short handouts to be distributed in class. All handouts and notes for
most lectures and/or discussions will be available for review on the course
Week 1
Thursday, 11 September. Introduction. What is Traditional? What is Modernity?
READ: Carlo Ginzburg , The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, pp. xi-xxv, 1-64.
Week 2 Return of Martin Guerre
Monday, 15 September.
DISCUSSION: Martin Guerre: The Challenges of Studying Traditional Societies
Related (not required) Materials
(1) Natalie Zemon Davis, Return of Martin Guerre (entire)
(2) Robert Finlay, "The Refashioning of Martin Guerre," American Historical Review 93 (1988)
(3) Natalie Davis, "On The Lame," American Historical Review 93 (1988)
Thursday, 18 September. The Cheese and the
DISCUSSION: The Cheese and the
Read: Carlo Ginzburg , The Cheese and
the
Related Materials
(1) Natalie Zemon Davis, "The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France," Past and Present Number 59 (May, 1973): 51-91.
(2) Daniel Lord Smail, "Common Violence: Vengeance and Inquisition in Fourteenth-Century Marseille," Past and Present, No. 151. (May, 1996): 28-59.
Week 3
Monday, 22 September. The Legend of Doctor Faustus
HANDOUT: The Legend of Doctor Faustus
Powerpoint: The
Faust Tradition
For access to the music samples played in lecture, see the lecture notes above.
Related Materials
(1) Nancy Caciola, "Mystics, Demoniacs, and the Physiology of Spirit Possession in Medieval Europe," Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 42, No. 2. (Apr., 2000): 268-306.
(2) Edward Peters, "The Desire to Know the Secrets of the World," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 62, No. 4. (Oct., 2001): 593-610.
Thursday, 25 September. From Oral to Written Cultures: Folktales
Selections from Little Red Riding Hood
Related Materials
(1) Adam Fox, "Ballads, Libels and Popular Ridicule in Jacobean England," Past and Present, No. 145. (Nov., 1994): 47-83.
(2) [B] G. R.
Quaife, Wanton Wenches and Wayward Wives: Peasants and Illicit Sex in Early
Seventeenth Century
Week 4
Monday, 29 September. European Witchcraft
PowerPoint Lecture on "European Witch Craze, 1450-1650"
Selections from Witchcraft Trial Transcripts
Full-text of the Malleus Malifacarum [The Witch Hammer] (1486)
Related Materials
(1) Edward Bever, "Witchcraft, Female Aggression, and Power in the Early Modern Community," Journal of Social History, Vol. 35, No. 4. (Summer, 2002): 955-988.
(2) Lyndal Roper, "'Evil Imaginings and Fantasies': Child-Witches and the End of the Witch Craze," Past and Present, No. 167. (May, 2000): 107-139.
Thursday, 2 October. The Revolution in Science & the European Enlightenment
DOCUMENT: Galileo and the Inquisition, 1633
PowerPoint Lecture on "The Sleepwalkers: The Origins of Modern Science"
Week 5
Monday, 6 October. Forbidden Knowledge
READ: Selections from Roger Shattuck's Forbidden Knowledge [Sade Samples]
HANDOUT: The Literary Legacy of the French Revolution
Bibliography
Full text of the Marquis de Sade's 120
Days of Sodom
Full text of the Marquis de Sade's Philosophy
of the Bedroom
Full text of the Marquis de Sade's Retaliation
(1787?)
For Further Information:
See an on-line museum tour at the
Related Materials
(1) Robert C.
Darnton, "The Forbidden
Bestsellers of Prerevolutionary France," Bulletin of the
(2) Frances Ferguson, “Sade and the Pornographic Legacy,” Representations No. 36 (Autumn 1991): 1-21.
Thursday, 9 October. The Origins of Modern Consumer Culture
Related Materials
(1) [B] Michael B. Miller, The Bon Marché (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
(2) [B] Elaine S. Abelson, When Ladies Go A-Thieving: Middle-Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Week 6
Monday, 13 October. Columbus Day. No classes.
Thursday, 16 October. Free Day. No class.
Week
7
Monday, 20 October. DISCUSSION: Marx & Marxism
Handout: The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844
PowerPoint Lecture on Conditions of the Working Class
READ: Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, entire.
The On-Line Complete Text of The Communist Manifesto
For Background Information
Marx & Engels
Internet Archive
Related Materials
(1) [B] Emily
Cockayne, Hubbub: Filth, Noise, & Stench in
(2) [B] Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988).
Thursday, 23 October. Social Darwinism
Discussion. Charles Darwin and Evolutionary Progressivism
READ: Charles
Darwin,
Related Materials
(1) Gregory Claeys, "The 'Survival of the Fittest' and the Origins of Social Darwinism," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 61, No. 2. (Apr., 2000): 223-240.
Week 8
Monday, 27 October. The Roots of Existentialism
Handout: Dostoevsky & Existentialism
DISCUSSION: Dostoevsky
READ: Fedor Dostoevskii, Notes from Underground,
entire
"The novels of Dostoevsky are seething
whirlpools...which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and
wholly of the stuff of the soul." (Virginia Woolf)
Links to the great writers
in Russian literature
For paper writers: In my sophomore
year at Northwestern back in 1978, I wrote the following paper for a literature
course: Dostoevsky's
Conception of the Human Duality: Nihilism versus Personal Immortality
The paper will provide some good leads for approaching Dostoevsky.
An On-Line Copy of Notes from Underground
Related Materials
(1) Georgia Noon, "On Suicide," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 39, No. 3. (Jul. - Sep., 1978): 371-386.
(2) Irina
Paperno, Suicide as a Cultural Institution in Dostoevsky's
Thursday, 30 October. The Moral
Universe of Lev Tolstoi. DISCUSSION.
READ: Lev Tolstoi, The Death of Ivan Ilych [Full text version available here]
"Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and
most ordinary and therefore most
terrible." --Lev
Tolstoi
PowerPoint Lecture on "The Moral Universe of Lev Tolstoi"
First short papers are due: Marx, Darwin,
Dostoevsky, or Tolstoi.
FIRST
PAPER QUESTIONS
Related Materials
(1) Howard
Week 9
Monday, 3 November. The Era of Social Malaise: William James and the "Twice-Born Sick Soul"
READ: See the full on-line text of Chapter VI, "The
Sick Soul", in William James, Varieties of Religious Experience
Handout: Varieties of Religious Experience
For Further Information:
See the full on-line text of William James, Varieties
of Religious Experience (1902) [Full on-line copy]
The William James
On-Line Museum at
Related Materials
(1) [B] Deborah
Blum, Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of
Life after Death (
(2) [B] Mother
Teresa and Brian Kolodiejchuk, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (
Thursday, 6
November. History
of Mental Illness; Masturbation
in Modern Society
DOCUMENT: Documents from the History of Masturbation
READ DOCUMENT: August Motet, "False Testimony
Given by Children
Before Courts of Justice," Annals of
Public Hygiene and Legal Medicine [
Related Materials
(1) Alan Hunt, "The Great Masturbation Panic and the Discourses of Moral Regulation in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Britain," Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 8, No. 4. (Apr., 1998): 575-615.
(2) Ellen Bayuk Rosenman, "Body Doubles: The Spermatorrhea Panic," Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 12, No. 3. (Jul., 2003): 365-399.
(3) R. P. Neuman, "Masturbation, Madness, and the Modern Concepts of Childhood and Adolescence," Journal of Social History, Vol. 8, No. 3. (Spring, 1975): 1-27.
Related Materials
(1) [B] Brian
Porter, Madness: A Brief History (
(2) Jill Harsin, "Gender, Class, and Madness in Nineteenth-Century France," French Historical Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4. (Autumn, 1992): 1048-1070.
Week 10
Monday, 10 November. A History of Child Abuse
Related Materials
(1) Tamara K. Hareven, "The History of the Family and the Complexity of Social Change," The American Historical Review, Vol. 96, No. 1. (Feb., 1991): 95-124.
(2) David Peterson, "Wife Beating: An American Tradition," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 23, No. 1. (Summer, 1992): 97-118.
Thursday, 13 November. Sigmund Freud and His Legacy; Freud's Rejection of the Seduction Theory
HANDOUT: Freud's Rejection
of the Seduction Theory 
DOCUMENT: Freud's
Letter to Fliess, 15 October 1897
DISCUSS: Sigmund Freud, The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis (1910)
For class, please review the Library of Congress On-Line Exhibit: Freud, Conflict & Culture
For Further Information:
See insightful on-line article: Douglas A. Davis,
"A Theory for the 90s: Traumatic Seduction in Historical Context," Psychoanalytic
Review Volume 81, Number 4 (Winter 1994).
See Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation
of Dreams Third Edition (1911) [Full on-line copy]
See Sigmund Freud, Psychopathology
of Everyday Life (1901) [Full on-line copy]
See Sigmund Freud, A
Young Girl's Diary (1923) [Full on-line copy]
The Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna:
On-line Service of the Sigmund Freud Society
Sigmund Freud and the Freud
Archives
New York Times book review of a shocking
examination of the Freud legacy:
Madness on the Couch
Related Materials
(1) [B] Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, The Assault on Truth, Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1984).
Week
11
Monday, 17 November. The Sociology of Fear: Crowd Hysteria
For Further Information:
See Gustav LeBon's The
Crowd (1896), available in a full on-line edition.
See Gustav LeBon's The
Psychology of Revolution (1913),
available in a full on-line edition.
Charles Mackay, Extraordinary
Popular Delusions and the Madness of
Crowds (
Related Materials
(1) Susanna
Barrows, Distorted Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late Nineteenth-Century
(2) Robert A. Nye, "Two Paths to a Psychology of Social Action: Gustave LeBon and Georges Sorel," The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 45, No. 3. (Sep., 1973): 411-438.
Thursday, 20 November. The Artist's Journey to the Interior: Artists & and the Crisis of Modernity
HANDOUT: The Lord Chandos Letter
Franz
Kafka, "A Hunger
Artist"
For Further Information:
See T. S. Eliot's The Waste
Land (1922) in an award-winning complete on-line edition.
Related Materials
(1) Annette Becker, "The Avant-Garde, Madness and the Great War," Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Jan., 2000): 71-84.
(2) Doris Kaufmann, "Science as Cultural Practice: Psychiatry in the First World War and Weimar Germany," Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 34, No. 1. (Jan., 1999): 125-144.
Week 12
Monday, 24 November.
The definitive portrait of
Virginia Woolf’s life and
work.
Thursday, 27 November. Thanksgiving BREAK. No
class.
Week 13
Monday, 1 December. Women in Modern Society
DISCUSS:
Virginia Woolf, A Room of
One's Own
The definitive portrait of Virginia Woolf’s life and work.
For Further Information:
Virginia Wolf's
Psychiatric History
See The Victorian Women
Writers Project at Indiana University, with full on-line texts of literary
works by British women writers.
Also see the University
of Virginia On-Line Text Project, with more than a hundred full on-line
texts of major women writers, East and West.
Related Materials
(1) Edward
Shorter, "The First
Great Increase in Anorexia Nervosa," Journal of Social
History, Vol. 21, No. 1.
(Autumn, 1987): 69-96.
(2) Mary Louise
Roberts, "Gender,
Consumption, and Commodity Culture," The American Historical Review,
Vol. 103, No. 3. (June, 1998): 817-844.
Thursday, 4 December. Reality Surpassing Imagination: The Cultural Legacy of the Second World War
For this class, please review in advance the
online exhibition:
The Undeniable
Holocaust: A Pictorial Archive of Nazi Depravity
HANDOUT: Beyond Redemption? Reflections on the Holocaust
HANDOUT: "Picture of the Week" from LIFE Magazine, 22 May 1944
Discussion: The Rediscovery of Evil in the Twentieth Century
DISCUSS: Primo Levi, Survival in
Auschwitz
Related Materials
(1) [B] Tom Segev, Soldiers of Evil (New York: McGraw Hill, 1987).
(2) [B]
Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final
Solution in
(3) Rachel MacNair, “Psychological Reverberations for the Killers: Preliminary Historical Evidence for Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress,” Journal of Genocide Research Volume 3, Number 2 (2001): 273-282. And, selection from Judith Herman, M.D., Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence–from domestic abuse to political terror (New York: Basic Books, 1992, 1997).
(4) Nicholas Stargardt, "Children's Art of the Holocaust," Past and Present, No. 161. (Nov., 1998): 191-235.
Week 14
Monday, 8 December. Monday, DISCUSSION: Sartre's Nausea [Diagnosing the Crisis of Modernity]
HANDOUT: R. D. Laing, Knots
Related Materials
The Unofficial R. D. Laing Site
Related Materials
(1) Mark Mazower, "Violence and the State in the Twentieth Century," The American Historical Review, Vol. 107, No. 4. (Oct., 2002): 1158-1178.
(2) Vaclav Havel's Harvard
Commencement Address,
Final short papers (on one of four: Freud,
Woolf, Levi, Sartre) are due in 249 Meserve Hall by
NOTE: There is only one final paper due. There is NO FINAL EXAM in this
course.