Problems in Contemporary Historiography

We will explore competing conceptions of the nature of historical inquiry. The historian's craft will be examined through the varied lenses of major methodological and philosophical paradigms prevalent over the last 30 years: Marxism, "critical" history, structuralism and the Annales School, and post-structuralism. Texts of the philosophers whose thought informs these approaches, such as Marx, Nietzsche, Saussure, Derrida, and Foucault, will be read. Historians whose scholarship has been shaped and influenced by these paradigms, such as Eric Hobsbawm, E.P. Thompson, Fernand Braudel, Le Roy Ladurie, Dominic LaCapra, and Hayden White, will also be considered. 3 hrs. sem.