Course Overview
This course is designed to help students think critically. The starting point is reading. Students will be taught to (a) adopt a skeptical stance toward the printed word; (b) recognize and state the thesis of a book; (c) question and test the thesis in systematic fashion; (d) evaluate the thesis on the basis of the evidence provided; and (e) articulate a carefully reasoned judgement of the book - positive or negative.
With practice and reinforcement from the instructor, you will gain increasing confidence in your ability to evaluate the material you encounter in history courses. The course is also writing intensive with assignments due each week; the regular writing of thesis statements and critical essays will help you to establish a firm foundation for writing worthwhile papers in other courses. Finally, participation in the weekly seminar will also aid in the development of the oral presentation skills that are essential to success in most history courses.
Required Readings
The texts assigned in this course come from a variety of fields. Neither the instructors nor the students are expected to be experts in all of these fields; indeed, the texts are chosen deliberately to demonstrate that one need not be a specialist to evaluate the argument of a text.
Richard Marius, A Short Guide to Writing About History
Daniel Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century
William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England
Barbara Miller Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918-1945
Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller
Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760-1820
