Rachel Fulton
Department of History
The University of Chicago
Winter 2008
HISTORY OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION II
Books Available for Purchase from the Seminary Co-Op Bookstore
Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, and Other Writings, ed. E.J. Hundert [Hackett Publishers, 1997; ISBN: 0872203743]
Mary Wollstonecroft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) [Penguin Books, 1993; ISBN: 0140433821]
Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (1819) [Penguin Books; ISBN 0-14-043658-8]
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859) [Hackett Publishers, 1978; ISBN: 0915144433]
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871) [Prometheus Books, 1998; ISBN 1573921769]
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents (1929), trans. James Strachey [Norton, 1961; ISBN 0-393-30158-3]
Primo
Levi, Survival
in Auschwitz [Touchstone, 1995; ISBN: 0684826801]
All Other Readings on Reserve in Regenstein Library or On-Line as
Indicated
Readings in Western Civilization 7: The Old Regime and the French Revolution, ed. Keith Michael Baker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986) = RWC 7 [CB245.U640 1986, vol. 7]
Readings in Western Civilization 8: Nineteenth-Century Europe. Liberalism and its Critics, ed. Jan Goldstein and John W. Boyer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986) = RWC 8 [CB245.U640 1986, vol. 8]
Readings in Western Civilization 9: Twentieth Century Europe, ed. John W. Boyer and Jan Goldstein (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986) = RWC 9 [CB245.U640 1986, vol. 9]
Course Requirements
1. Careful study of the assigned readings. As one of the main purposes of this course is to enable you to read different kinds of texts from different historical periods and to develop your confidence in approaching unfamiliar texts in the future, it is very important that you read each of the assigned selections as carefully as possible before coming to class each day. As you read, keep in mind not only our larger questions about the nature and development of European civilization, but also what makes the particular text you are reading distinct. It will help if you ask yourself the following questions: what does the author tell us about why he or she was writing? Why was the author’s subject so important that he or she considered it worth writing about? What does the author’s interest in the subject tell us about the historical circumstances in which he or she was writing?
2.
Participation in class discussion and comments
on the texts discussed (30% of your final grade). To help you prepare for the discussions and to give me some
indication of how you are reading, you will be required over the course of the
quarter to post to the Chalk discussion board eight comments (about 300 words each)
by 8am on
the morning we discuss the text.
NO EXCEPTIONS, so be sure to keep track of your postings over the course
of the quarter. Hint: it’s
best just to plan to do one a week. These
comments should address questions that occurred to you in the course of your
reading (e.g. about the problems you had understanding the text, about things
that surprised you in the text, about issues or particulars about which you
would like to know more having read the text), as well as answers to the
general questions posed above concerning the author’s purpose and interest.
3.
Two textual analyses (6-8 pages, each 20% of
your final grade). These will each
consist of a formal analysis of one of the texts or sets of texts that we will
have already read and discussed in class.
The first will be due February 5. The second
will be due March
4.
4.
Final exam (30% of your final grade). In class during exam week (March
17-21).
Reading and
Discussion Assignments
January 10 On the Nature of Man and the
Origins of Moral Virtue
Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public Benefits, Volume I (1723), and An Enquiry into the Origins of Honor, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War, First Dialogue, ed. E.J. Hundert (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishers, 1997), pp. 19-55, 56-61, 80-87, 94-107, 109-54, 195-213, 214-15 [BJ1520 .M4 1997]
[Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Diderot, Encyclopedie]
January 15 The End of Empire
Edward Gibbon, “Some General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West”; chapter LXXI; and “A Vindication etc.” in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788), ed. David Wormersley, 6 vols. in 3 (London and New York: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1994), vol. 2, pp. 508-16; vol. 3, pp. 1062-85; vol. 3, pp. 1108-24 [DG311.G5 1994]
________, Memoirs of My Life, ed. Betty Radice (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), pp. [134-54]
[Rousseau, La nouvelle Heloise; Casanova, Memoirs]
January 17 Revolution
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, “What is the Third Estate?” (1789) [RWC 7, pp. 154-79]
Dispatches from Paris (April-July 1789) [RWC7, pp. 184-98]
Peasant Grievances, Reports of Popular Unrest, Decrees of the National Assembly, The “October Days” (1789) [RWC7, pp. 208-37]
“Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” (1789) [RWC7, pp. 237-39]
“The Civil Constitution of the Clergy” (1790) [RWC 7, pp. 239-42]
Mary
Wollstonecroft, A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman (1792), pp. 79-123, 133-35, 142-48, 156-74, 257-69, 324-28
[HQ1596.W60 1975b; also Harper
HQ1596.W61 1988]
[Emancipation
of the Negroes]
The King’s Trial [RWC7, pp. 302-23]
“Make Terror the Order of the Day” (5 September 1793) [RWC7, pp. 342-53]
The Law of Suspects (17 September 1793) [RWC7, pp. 353-54]
Maximilien Robespierre, “Report on the Principles of Political Morality” [RWC 7, pp. 368-84]
The Festival of the Supreme Being (8 June 1794) [RWC7, pp. 384-91]
Joseph de Maistre, “Considerations on France” (1797) [RWC 7, pp. 445-52]
Sir
Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (1819), Dedicatory
Epistle to Dryasdust (pp. 5-14); vol. 1, chaps. 1-8, 13 (pp. 15-85, 117-25);
vol. 2, chaps. 1-2, 8, 10, 14 (pp. 133-47, 179-86, 193-202, 230-41); vol. 3,
chaps. 2, 5, 7, 9-10, 13-14 (pp. 271-82, 301-311, 319-330, 337-70,
382-401) [PR5322 .W4 1995]
Thomas
Carlyle, “Signs of the Times” (1829): http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/carlyle/signs1.html
Thomas
Carlyle, Past
and Present (1843), Book 2,
chapter 10: “Government”; Book 4, chapter 4: “Captains of Industry”: http://www.historyhome.co.uk/readings/carlyle/contents.htm
Samuel Smiles, “William Fairbairn” [RWC vol. 8, pp. 82-92]
Two Articles from The Economist (1851) [RWC vol. 8, pp. 92-100]
February 5 The Essence of Christianity Textual
essay #1 due in class
Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (1854) (New York: Harper, 1957), pp. 1-32 [BL51.F426]
Ernest Renan, The Life of Jesus (1863) [RWC 8, pp. 336-51]
James Thomson, “Jesus Christ Our Great Exemplar” (1874): http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/thomson/1.html
Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections [RWC 8, pp. 220-241]
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question” (1844), in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker, 2nd edition (New York: Norton, 1978), pp. 26-52 [HX39.5.M3740 1978]
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859), ed. Elizabeth Rapaport [Harper JC585.M60 1978]
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871), chaps. 3, 4, 5, 19 [and 21] (pp. 66-151, 576-586 [-606], [629-43], 642-43) [QH365.D20 1981]
Nikolay
Ivanovich Bukharin and Yevgeny Preobrazhensky, The ABC of
Communism (1922), trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1966), Foreward, Introduction, ch. 2, #18; ch. 3; ch. 9; ch. 11; ch. 25(pp. 15-16, 19-25, 66-91,
220-27, 247-57, 331-36). [HX632.B9 1966]
February 21 The Civilization of Man
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents (1929), trans. James Strachey [BF1400.F88776]
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1925) [RWC 9, pp. 191-218]
Arthur Koestler, The God that Failed (1949) [RWC 9, pp. 352-67]
February 28 …
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (1958) [D805.P7L4413 1993]
Bruno Bettelheim, Deposition before the U.S. Chief Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality (July 1945) [RWC9, pp. 466-82]
Simone
de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949),
Introduction, chapters 1-3, 8-9; trans. H. M. Parshley, pp. xv-xxxiv, 3-67,
122-223 [HQ1206.B382 or HQ1208.B35213
1993 or HQ1208.B35213 1989]
[reduce
assignment? Just Introduction and
Conclusion?]
Selected Constitutions and Declarations from the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965): Gaudium et Spes, Dignitatis Humanae, and Nostra Aetate: http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/
March 11 A New Europe
Václav Havel, "The Power of the Powerless", in Living in Truth: Twenty-two essays published on the occasion of the award of the Erasmus Prize to Václav Havel, ed. Jan Vladislav (London/Boston: Faber and Faber, 1989), pp. 36-122 [DB2241.H38A50 1989b]