MARGINALITY AND POWER: HISTORY FROM BELOW

Catalog description

(Slashed with HIST 82360 ) Who makes history? Every historian must grapple with this question and every generation of modern historians has answered this question in a different way. One response to this question is to write "history from below" and focus on the ways in which common people and historically marginalized groups have contributed to historical changes and developments in their societies and cultures. Throughout this course, we review some of the classic scholarship and new works that engage in the task of writing "history from below." Our goal is to understand how "history from below" has developed over the last few decades and to engage with the important questions about representation and agency that this approach to history raises. A variety of assignments serve to further our exploration of the topic and help us gain some practice not just in analyzing "histories from below," but also doing "history from below."