Hist 226 Renaissance to Revolution!

Occidental College Fall 2022

CREDITS:     CORE Credits:  Global Connections (CPGC) & Pre-1800 (CPPE)

                     History Credits: Survey, Pre-1800     GWSS:   Elective                                                                                                                   

Class meets 1:30-2:55 p.m. Tues and Thurs.  Johnson 200 (an auditorium with Blue-Ray projection for feature film Belle) Break 2:15-2:25   45 minutes, break,  30 minutes

Instructor:  Prof. Maryanne Horowitz

Office Hours: Zoom. Sign up at least 30 minutes before office hours begin that day.   You will then receive an invitation in your email.

 Sign up for 15 or 30 minute appointment at

 https://www.oxy.edu/academics/faculty/maryanne-horowitz

Mon. 3-4:30, Wed. 9-10:30 and some Wed. also 10:30-12:00

Paperbacks for purchase:  Oxy bookstore has some, but wise for some students to order Used from Amazon.com for quick delivery .

·       Berenson, Europe in the Modern World: a Narrative History, 2nd edition (Oxford,2021) main textbook (2 in same dorm might share), read ahead to benefit most from some chapter ppts shown in class.

·       Crane Brinton, Anatomy of Revolution (1965 edition ebook on reserve) any edition ok  (useful to write your views in margins of your pb.)

·       Michel de Montaigne,  Selected Essays with La Boétie’s Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (Hackett pb.) (this edition best for all on same page for discussion)

·       Lynn Hunt, The French Revolution and Human Rights (2nd ed. Bedford pb.) 1 copy on reserve (2 in same dorm might share)

Class MOODLE starts with books on reserve for this semester, and then includes books in library stacks recommended in previous years of Hist. 226.

Course Description:
A history survey of the 14th-18th centuries: Renaissance, scientific advance, global encounters in Spanish and English empires, the Enlightenment, and revolutions (English, American, French). The luxury of European palaces and curiosity cabinets was based upon the exploitation of European peasants and global indigenous peoples. Students seeking origins of feminist and natural rights arguments will consider protest pamphlets, women's writings, utopian fiction, and enlightenment stories (some with film versions), which created empathy for others.

Course Objectives

To gain familiarity with major events, people, movements, and global influences in the history of the English, French, American, and Russian Revolutions.

To learn basic methods of historical investigation, particularly analysis of theories of revolutionary stages, as well as analysis of textual and visual sources of revolutionary ideas (especially human rights and opposition to servitude among a diversity of women and men)

To focus on comparisons, interactions, and/or interconnected systems, institutions, and ideas in Western Europe, North America, and Eastern Europe.

To discuss the circulation of ideas, people, and objects across boundaries.

Course Outcomes

An expansion of skills in argument, writing, and oral presentation developed in a seminar-style course.

A critical awareness of how the past informs the present, providing an understanding of the conditions that made possible the break with or the persistence of social structures, organizational hierarchies, artistic productions, or patterns of thought.

A critical awareness of artistic productions, social structures, organizational hierarchies, political economies, or patterns of thought and practices that characterize historical communities and the experiences of peoples of the past.

A critical awareness of the past as a resource for imagining new ways of thinking, acting, organizing society, and forming community

Equipment available to students:  Laptops are available for loan at Library Information Desk at the Academic Commons.  Form for requesting laptop:   https://oxy.freshservice.com/support/catalog/items/108

 

Typed papers and exams are to be emailed to horowitz@oxy.edu in Word.doc or .docx.  Please request WORD for your use: “You may use Office365 which is an online version of the Microsoft Office suite on your personal machine at home or on campus for the duration of your career at Oxy. Simply visit https://www.office.com and sign in with your OXY login credentials. Please email the Technology Helpdesk to let us know if you have any questions.”

 

Requirements: Each 25%

Class participation

Typed Exam on Laptops (Laptops may be reserved in Academic Commons) Thurs. Oct. 6 (based on lectures, readings, class discussion)      

Choice between a paper analyzing innovative, radical texts OR a paper evaluating an influential historical explanation of revolution (Due Nov. 10, optional rewrite Nov. 30. Earlier assignments are to provide in-class guidance on paper writing.)

Radical thought in essays of Montaigne exclusively, or with La Boétie, Marie de Gournay, or with documents in Hunt.  Your paper is an intellectual history or history of ideas paper.

Stages of Revolution, evaluating Brinton’s explanation of shift from one historical stage to another with regard to 2 revolutions (English or French & American or Russian). Your paper argues your historical interpretation within a controversy on an aspect of revolution.

Typed Exam Tues Nov. 22 (based on lectures, readings, film Belle, class discussion) Plan to be at class that Tuesday before Thanksgiving. No final week exam 

Instruction on Paper Assignment and Grading Policy at end of Syllabus, followed by Link to Occidental College Policies Fall 2022

WEEKLY SCHEDULE (aim to read before Tues.)

1) Berenson,  Calvinism in France and England pp. 17-28,  ch. 3, pp. 99-108, Skip ahead to 122-141  Focus on Little Ice Age, English Revolution, the Fronde and Louis XIV’s Absolutism. See outline we shall use on Brinton

https://www.raleighcharterhs.org/faculty/bnewmark/EURO/CraneBrintonhandout.htm 

To see influence of La Boétie on revolutionary thought, start at Wikipedia on La Boétie

Tuesday, August 30, 2022   Introduction to the course and the students.  Viewing Belle until letter from Belle’s father and two nieces discussing in bedroom dowries determining a girl’s fate.

Student discussion of short documents including last paragraph of Montaigne’s “On Cannibals.”   Introduction to issues of analyzing revolutions--some based on religious ideologies, others on secular ideologies.

Thursday, September 1, 2022  Lecture on English Revolution (17th century).  Discussion of Montaigne’s essay “On Cannibals’ pp. 87-100 If you do not have our book yet, go to an old translation of Montaigne on-line,  Essays of Michel de Montaigne, Project Gutenberg, ch. XXX there.

2) La Boétie compares living under a monarch to enslavement. Etienne de la Boétie  “Discourse on Voluntary Servitude,” pp. 284-291 in Selected Essays  (Hackett) Also read Montaigne I. ch. 31 “On Cannibals,” pp. 87-99.  In Berenson, French Empire, pp. 82-84 and timeline p. 85

Tuesday, September 6, 2022

Thursday, September 8, 2022 Radical writings comparing living under absolutism to slavery.  Likelihood of Montaigne’s publication of La Boétie (see Montaigne’s essay “On Friendship” pp. 73-78).

Extra credit: Revolution of a society via Conquest by a very different society.  See in Academic Commons and then report on film Sept. 14 or 21: America, un Mundo Nuevo (set to English) on the 500-years-ago Spanish conquest of Teotihuacan from point of view of the conquered or Black Robe (French colonialism in Canada)

3) Pick a location to read in Berenson further on colonialism for student oral comments, Dutch empire pp. 71-72, or British Empire, pp. 72-79, or Spanish Empire, pp. 57-66, or Portuguese Empire pp. 66-68 .
 Berenson, ch. 4 “Science and Enlightenment, 1600-1789” pp. 143-160 on scientific revolution for Tues.; pp. 161-189 for Thursday.   Continue reading Montaigne, “Friendship”  to p. 86

Tuesday, September 13, 2022 Bring Montaigne to class.   Discussion on colonial empires: signups for Hunt documents discussion Thurs. and Tues. Close reading in class of “Friendship.”  Lecture on Marie de Gournays’s friendship with Montaigne.

Thursday, September 15, 2022  Discussion of studying for exam on Oct. 6

4)  Berenson, ch. 5 pp. 190-227  Revolution in France and in Haiti.  Individual topics of interest and volunteering for analysis in class : In Hunt’s The French Revolution and Human Rights, part l, pp. 1-32 on defining rights before 1789,  and Part I, documents  6-8  (pp. 49-57) on Anti-slavery Agitation and Part II, documents 25-31( pp. 95-108) on Free Blacks and Slaves.


Tuesday, September 20, 2022 Student analysis of Hunt’s anti-slavery and women’s rights documents. Discussion of Berenson, ch. 4 “Science and Enlightenment, 1600-1789”. 

Thursday, September 22, 2022 Lecture on stage 1 in Crane Brinton’s stages of revolution.

5)  Berenson, ch. 5 pp. 226-239 on Napoleon’s European Empire & Legacy of French Revolution. See Hunt, pp. 139-140  Questions for Consideration (pick those of most interest to you) Individiual topics of interest:  women’s rights, document 9 and document 31-38 in Hunt, pp. 58-61, 109-130; religious minorities’ rights, documents 2-5 and 18-24 in Hunt pp.38-48, 81-94. 

Tuesday, September 27, 2022  Discuss women’s rights and minorities’ rights in French Revolution.   Interrelationships of American, French, and Haitian Revolutions   Lecture on ch. 5 “The Era of the French Revolution”

Thursday, September 29, 2022   Pass in a statement of paper you would like to write.

Paper assignment gives a choice between your close reading of Renaissance and Early Modern texts (intellectual history) or analysis of an aspect or a stage of Brinton’s theory of revolutionary change through you reading on 2 revolutions (English or French compared with American or Russian) or an analysis of the legal movement to abolish the slave trade.

 

Decide between 2 types of papers:

ANALYSIS OF A THEORY OF HISTORICAL CHANGE:  Shift from one revolutionary stage to another as defined by Crane Brinton of 2 revolutions (one from Western Europe, namely English or French Revolution to do a global comparison, either the American or Russian Revolution)

 Or

ANALYSIS OF RADICAL TEXTS:  Radical thought in essays of Montaigne exclusively, or with La Boétie, or with Marie de Gournay, or with documents in Hunt.

6)   Industrial Revolution, Berenson ch. 6, 240-285.  Laboring classes—Marxism, Trade Unions, Socialist parties, pp. 368-373  Review of Berenson, pp. 66, 77-79, 82-84, 194-5 as background to film Belle.
Tuesday, October 4, 2022  Lecture on Industrial Revolution and Marx’s theory of class conflict.

Thurs. Oct. 6, 2022 Bring loaded laptop for in-class exam.  Study sheet is on MOODLE.

History of the British movement for abolishment of slavery.  Belle, directed by Amma Asante on Dido Elizabeth Belle and her uncle Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of England during the Zong massacre case of 1783.

7).   Make progress on your paper. 
Tuesday, October 11, 2022 No classes, Fall break
Thursday October 13, 2022  Completion of Film Belle shown in class.

8) Berenson, ch. 7 “Conservation, Reform, and Revolution, 1815-1852” with focus the new isms on pp. 302-309, Russia, pp 310-12,  and on 1848 revolution, pp.328-337.

Tues. Oct. 18, 2022 Discussion of the issues raised by the film Belle. Berenson, ch. 11 Catch up on reading of The Russian Revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union, 1905-1940, pp. 480-527. 

Extended Office hours available Wed. Oct. 19.

Thurs., October 20, 2022  Stage l of paper assignment: Bring 2 typed copies Times Roman 12 point. 1 page proposal. 1 page Works Cited. 1 copy is for Prof. Horowitz; other copy is to share in a small group discussion. State the issues, conflicting historical interpretations, and documents (texts or images)  that interest you.  Include your Works Cited divided into Primary and Secondary Sources. Formation of student discussion groups for related paper topics. For a paper on revolution, start directly citing Brinton’s Anatomy of Revolution in your paper draft. Of particular interest may be ch 6 “Accession of the Extremists” (Robespierre and Lenin compared there)

 

Consider revolutionary theory in Marxism and Leninism and books by Marx and Lenin.  Lecture on Ch. 11 The Russian Revolution, and the rise of the Soviet Union

 

9) Tuesday, October 25, 2022

In response to students’ interest in Russian Revolution (1905, 1917, Lenin and Stalin), a  lecture on later development in USSR, pp. 607-609, 638-640, 646-650, 664-667, and ch. 15 678-725, 732-733


Thursday, October 27, 2022  Go directly to 3rd floor of Academic Commons. Meeting in Special Collections for Hands-on visit to a Renaissance library.

 

10) Tues. Nov. 1 Stage 2 of paper assignment. By noon, Email to horowitz@oxy.edu with Word.doc labelled by your first and last name. Pass in title suggesting thesis, 2 paragraphs from any part of intended paper with M.L.A. references to primary and secondary sources, followed by Works Cited divided into Primary and Secondary Sources.  Prof. Horowitz will keep a copy of her suggestions passed back, hoping that they are followed. Bring a copy of your work on  paper assignment and your paper reading notes (ok on laptop) to class for group workshops. Primary source documents on French and Russian Revolutions passed out ahead for use in papers.  Cite author and title from Allison Scardino Belzer and Jonathan S. Perry, eds., Sources for Europe in the Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017) Each student to make oral statement on paper, or analyze  l document on French or Russian Revolution, or state thoughts on student’s reading of Brinton’s text on “Accession of the Extremists” 

 

Tues. Nov. 1, 2022 Montaigne “To the Reader” and  I.1 “By Differing Means we Attain the Same End”  Start later essay III.12 “On Physiognomy” 

Discussion of style of Montaigne’s first essays. Lecture on “On Physiognomy” 

 

Thursday, November 3,2022 Analysis of “On Physiognomy” in relationship to reoccurrence of plagues and virtue unrelated to societal class. 5 minute oral statements on papers.

Workshop on MLA notes for papers. All bring your laptop, sources to cite, and paper draft.  Acknowledge in your Works Cited, any student who was helpful to you at Workshop.

11)   Tuesday, November 8,2022  5 minute oral statements on papers.

 

Thursday, November 10, 2022 Paper due at beginning of class. 

 

12)   Tuesday, November 15, 2022

 Thursday, November 17, 2022    Review for exam. Reading

 

13) Tuesday, November 22, 2022 Second In-Class Exam. Bring laptop.  Belle will be discussed in an essay.

Thursday, November 24, 2022 No classes, Thanksgiving

14) Tuesday, November 29, 2022   Bring laptop and  Lynn Hunt, The French Revolution and Human Rights.  Workshop on natural rights to human rights.      https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

 

Thursday, December 1, 2022 Student Evaluations. Printed copies: Optional-improved paper passed in with one passed in on time on Nov. 10 (printed with professor’s comments).  Provide envelope addressed to your mailbox for receiving back early next semester.

………………………………………….

Grading Policies, Hist. 226

Paper Assignment:

6-8 page paper in Word.doc, paginated, including M.L.A. parenthetical notes and additional pages of Works Cited divided into the Primary and Secondary Sources utilized.

Format: Times Roman, 12 point, 1 inch margins, paginated in Word.doc or .docx.  List word count at end. 

The criteria for evaluating the paper are as follows:

●       Provides thesis and logical structure of paper

●       Considers alternate historical interpretations, the secondary sources (with M.L.A parenthetical notes to scholars or students in the class)

●       Argues for thesis via detailed analysis of primary sources and differences between them

●       Writes in proper sentences and paragraphs (each with one topical sentence)

●       Provides parenthetical notes for quotations and summaries, leading reader to author and page.

●    Works cited divided into Primary Sources and Secondary Sources M.L.A. Style (See Turabian from First Year Seminar)

Grading:   Prof. Horowitz she seeks to work with you so that the final grades range only from B- to A.  Final course grades in this class have the following meaning: (Prof. Horowitz is aiming to assign only grades B-, B, B+, A-, A)

A  Outstanding performance. You have demonstrated very thorough knowledge and understanding of all the material, truly superior critical thinking, and expressed insightful and original thoughts clearly. You have completed all required assignments, and they have been among the best in the class.

B  Good performance. You have demonstrated solid knowledge and understanding of the material and good critical thinking. You have also shown the ability to express your ideas clearly. You have completed all required assignments, and they have been of good quality.

C  Satisfactory performance. You have demonstrated basic knowledge and understanding of the major concepts taught in the class and some critical thinking. You have completed all or most of the required assignments, and they have routinely been free of significant problems.

D  Deficient performance. You have only acquired a limited understanding of the class material. You have failed to complete all the required assignments, and they have routinely had serious problems.

F Failure. You have failed to learn a sufficient proportion of the basic concepts and ideas taught in the class. You have failed to complete many required assignments, and they have routinely had serious problems.

 

Resources in Academic Commons:

●       The Writing Center offers opportunities to work on all forms of writing for any class or other writing tasks such as personal statements, senior comprehensives, etc. We offer peer-to-peer consultations with knowledgeable Writing Advisers and sessions with Faculty Writing Specialists. See the Writing Center website for more information about our fall hours and how students can sign up for appointments. Please contact the Writing Programs-Center Director, Julie Prebel (jprebel@oxy.edu) for more information on how the Center can work with you.

●       The college offers library research consultations and discipline-specific peer tutoring for coursework 

●      Attendance Policy and Participation Definition.  Quotations come from official Occidental College  fall 2022 policy suggestions:

 “Participation is expected as the work that we do in class is critical to your understanding of the material and you will be giving feedback to your peers on many occasions…. However, if there is a medical issue or family emergency please let me know; I recognize that other life issues can sometimes arise unexpectedly. If you must miss class due to an official Oxy event, or due to reasons of faith or conscience, please let me know as early in the semester as possible.”

“We are still in a public health emergency, and students may have difficulties beyond their control that prevent their attendance on a given day (e.g., symptoms that are consistent with COVID-19, or a positive COVID-19 test). Your health and well-being, and that of our community, are essential. If you are feeling any symptoms of illness, even if they are slight, please refrain from attending class until explicitly cleared by Emmons. Similarly, if you have a known exposure to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19, please do not return to class until Emmons confirms that you are cleared to participate in your usual activities.”

“Students are expected to wear masks at all times during all indoor classroom activities. Students may eat or drink in class; however you should step outside if need to remove your mask for even a brief period of time.”  Prof. Horowitz provides a 10 minute break.

●      Late Assignment Policy. Please inform Prof. Horowitz ahead if you are not able to meet the deadline for a paper assignment or an exam.  She will try to accommodate your re-scheduling.   Meanwhile, please utilize the many Resources offered by Occidental College Student Affairs

 

Link to Occidental College Policies Fall 2022: