HISTUA471

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Fall 2013 Draft Syllabus

HISTUA-286

THE EUROPEAN ENLIGHTENMENT

John ShovlinHistory Department

53 Washington Square South, Rm. 422

e-mail: [email protected]: (212) 998-8639

Office Hours: Thursday 2.003.30 or by appointment

The European Enlightenment has been described as a revolution of the mind, a fundamental momentof transformation in the way Europeans imagined the world and their place in it, and a foundationalmoment for the emergence of modern freedom. What was the nature of this intellectual and culturalrevolution? Was it truly an emancipation, or did it invent new forms of oppression and slavery? Whatcaused this transformation, and what was its relationship to the great revolutions of the age in America,France, and Haiti? This course introduces students to major themes in late seventeenth- and

eighteenth-century European thought, and to significant scholarly debates on the character andsignificance of the Enlightenment in European history. Using a combination of primary and secondaryreadings, students will explore Enlightenment thinking on religion, science, economics, race, gender, thenon-European world, international relations, government and political revolution. The course will touchupon a series of major problems in the interpretation of the Enlightenment, assessing the balancebetween religious and secularizing modes of thought; the role and significance of universalist discourse;the extent to which the Enlightenment can be regarded as a moment of human liberation, or its reverse;and the relationship between the Enlightenment and the Age of Revolution. Students will develop adeeper understanding of history by exploring aspects of a major tradition of historical research andinterpretation. The class will be reading and writing-intensive, and culminates with a major researchpaper based on primary sources, exploring a theme related to the course.

Books Available for Purchase:

Dan Edelstein, The Enlightenment: A Genealogy(Chicago, 2010).

Jonathan Israel,A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of ModernDemocracy(Princeton, 2010).

Thomas Paine, Paine: Political Writings, ed. Bruce Kuklick(Cambridge, 2000) [1770s1790s].

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations(Indianapolis, 1982) [1776].

Voltaire, Letters on England(Harmondsworth, 1980) [1734].

Course Guidelines

The goal of the course is to develop students skills in argument and expression, their ability to think in asophisticated way about history, and their capacity for historical research and strong academic writing.The final grade will be based on the following components:

Participation(20%): Your principal responsibility for the first eleven weeks of the course is to completethe reading assignments on time and to come to class prepared to discuss them. You are expected toattend every class meeting and to participate actively in the discussion of the assigned readings. In

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working out the participation portion of the grade, both your attendance in class and the quality of yourinterventions (questions and comments) will be weighed. A student who attends regularly, but whoseparticipation is minimal should not expect a participation grade above a B-.

Presentations(20%): Students are required to make two class presentations (10 minutes each), focusedon a particular reading assigned for the week in question, the first based on readings from weeks 15,

the second on weeks 611.

Short Writing Assignments (10%): Students will be asked periodically to do short, ungraded writingassignments, ranging in length from a paragraph to a few pages. These assignments are intended toimprove students analytical writing skills, and to prepare them to succeed on the research papercomponent of the course.

Research paper(50%): Students will be required to write a research paper (1520 pages) exploring atopic to be worked out between the student and the instructor. The paper must touch on a main themeof the course, but within these parameters the scope for individual choice of topic will be wide. Papersmust be based on a combination of primary and secondary sources. A topic may be selected only ifprimary sources are available to adequately address that topic. Students are strongly encouraged to

work with non-English language sources, where possible. Quality of writing, and skill in constructingarguments, in addition to quality of research and conceptualization, will count heavily in determining thefinal paper grade. Students will be required to submit a proposal identifying the principal question theirpaper will address along with the chief primary and secondary sources they plan to use.

Students will be required to submit a complete draft of the paper (1215 pages) in addition to the finaldraft. This initial draft should be a finished and polished piece of writing, not a rough draft; it will begraded and will count toward half of the overall paper grade (or 25% of the course grade). Drafts will bepeer reviewed and discussed in class over the last three weeks of the course. Paper drafts are due onthe Sunday preceding the class in which they will be discussed. There can be no extensions for drafts,and late drafts will be penalized one letter grade per day. The final draft should constitute a completeand thorough revision of the first draft, and should be rewritten in light of the written comments

students receive on the first draft. Typically, additional research in both primary and secondary sourceswill be necessary when revising a draft of a seminar paper. The grading standards for the final draft willbe more exacting than the standards for the earlier draft. Thus a draft that has not been revisedsignificantly will receive a lower grade if submitted as a final paper.

Peer Paper Review: Over the last three weeks of the course, first drafts of student papers will bediscussed in class. Active involvement in the peer review process will be an important basis fordetermining the participation grade.

POLICY ON ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: If you are found to have plagiarized any part of a paper,proposal, or other written work submitted for the course you will be reported to the appropriate deanfor disciplinary action, and you will receive a failing grade for the course.

Schedule of Assigned Readings:

Week 1 Introduction

Wed 9/4 No assigned reading.

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Week 2 Defining Enlightenment

Wed 9/11 Jonathan Israel,A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins ofModern Democracy(Princeton, 2010), preface and chapter 1.

Dan Edelstein, The Enlightenment: A Genealogy(Chicago, 2010), selections..

Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1995), 1430.

Robert Darnton, The High Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literaturein Pre-Revolutionary France, Past and Present51 (1971): 81115.

Week 3 Enlightenment and Religion

Wed 9/18 Israel,A Revolution of the Mind, chapter 4.

John Locke,ALetter Concerning Toleration and Other Writings, ed. Mark Goldie

(Indianapolis, 2010), ixxxiii, 767. http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2375

Voltaire, Letters on England, letters 17.

Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason: Part First, in Paine: Political Writings, ed. BruceKuklick(Cambridge, 2000), 267317.

Week 4 Enlightenment and Science

Wed 9/25 Thomas L. Hankins, Science and the Enlightenment(Cambridge, 1985), 116, 15890.

Voltaire, Letters on England, Letters 1117, 2324.

Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 17601820(Cambridge, 1992), 149.

Robert Darnton,Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (New York,1970), 345.

Week 5 Enlightenment Economics


Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations(Indianapolis, 1982) [1776], selections.http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/200/217482
http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2375http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2375http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/200/217482http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/200/217482http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/200/217482http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2375

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Week 6 Enlightenment and Human Difference

Wed 10/9 Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, ThePersian Letters, Introduction andletters 2629, 3538, 118. http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1338

Denis Diderot, Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville.

http://www.essex.ac.uk/cish/enlightenment/text/boug.html

Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment Against Empire(Princeton, 2003), 1123, 3171.https://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/5291297

Louis Sala-Molins, The Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment, trans.John Conteh-Morgan (Minneapolis, 2006), 339.

Week 7 Enlightenment and International Relations

Wed 10/16 Israel,A Revolution of the Mindchapter 4.

David Hume, Of the Balance of Power, in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary(Indianapolis, 1987).http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/704/137538

Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations(Indianapolis, 2008) [1758], brief selections.http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2246

Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch.http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm

Week 8 Enlightenment and Government


Voltaire, Letters on England, letters 810.

Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria,An Essay on Crimes and Punishments[1764], Introductionand chapters 13, 68, 1217, 19, 21, 28.http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2193

John Shovlin Rethinking Enlightened Reform in a French Context, in Enlightened Reformin Southern Europe and its Atlantic Colonies c. 17501830, ed. Gabriel Paquette (Aldershot,2009), 4762.https://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/5291311

T.C.W. Blanning, Frederick the Great and Enlightened Absolutism, in EnlightenedAbsolutism: Reform and Reformers in Later Eighteenth-Century Europe, ed. H.M. Scott (AnnArbor, 1990), 26588.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1338http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1338http://www.essex.ac.uk/cish/enlightenment/text/boug.htmlhttp://www.essex.ac.uk/cish/enlightenment/text/boug.htmlhttps://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/5291297https://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/5291297http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/704/137538http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/704/137538http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/704/137538http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2246http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2246http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htmhttp://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htmhttp://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2193http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2193https://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/5291311https://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/5291311https://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/5291311https://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/5291311http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2193http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htmhttp://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2246http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/704/137538https://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/5291297http://www.essex.ac.uk/cish/enlightenment/text/boug.htmlhttp://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1338

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Week 9 Enlightenment and Revolution 1

Wed 10/30 Israel,A Revolution of the Mindchapter 7.

Keith M. Baker, ed., The Old Regime and the French Revolution(Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1987), 15460, 23739, 36268, 38491.

Paine, Political Writings, 59111, 14753.

Darrin McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and theMaking of Modernity(Oxford, 2001), 5688.https://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/5242902

Week 10 Enlightenment and Revolution 2

Wed 11/6 Roger Chartier, Do Books Make Revolutions? in Cultural Origins of the French Revolution(Durham, NC 1991), 6791.

Keith M. Baker, ed., The Old Regime and the French Revolution(Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1987), 36884, 41627.

David A. Bell, The First Total War(Boston, 2007), 84119.

Tackett, A Revolution of the Mind? Becoming a Revolutionary: The Deputies of the FrenchNational Assembly and the Emergence of a Revolutionary Culture (1789-1790) (Princeton,1996), 4876.

Week 11 Class will not meet this week. Instead there will be mandatory individual conferencesto discuss progress on paper drafts. Conferences will be scheduled during the class

period but will take place in Prof. Shovlins office, KJCC 422.

CLASS MEETINGS ON NOVEMBER 20,NOVEMBER 29,DECEMBER 4WILL BE

DEVOTED TO PEER DISCUSSION OF STUDENT DRAFT PAPERS.

The papers of your fellow seminar students constitute your reading assignment in theseweeks of the course. Papers must be submitted to instructor as an e-mail attachment onthe Friday preceding class discussion. They will be posted on the Blackboard site.

FINAL PAPERS DUE BY DECEMBER 14
https://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/5242902https://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/5242902https://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/5242902https://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/5242902

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HISTUA471