Students

MHIS3075 – Shock and Awe: A History of the Postmodern World

2020 – Session 1, Fully online/virtual

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update

Due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, any references to assessment tasks and on-campus delivery may no longer be up-to-date on this page.

Students should consult iLearn for revised unit information.

Find out more about the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and potential impacts on staff and students

General Information

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Unit convenor and teaching staff Unit convenor and teaching staff Unit Convenor
Mark Hearn
Contact via mark.hearn@mq.edu.au
Level 2 Hearing Hub
Thursday 10am-11 am
Credit points Credit points
10
Prerequisites Prerequisites
130cp at 1000 level or above OR (20cp in HIST or MHIS or POL or POIR or MHIX or POIX units at 2000 level)
Corequisites Corequisites
Co-badged status Co-badged status
Unit description Unit description
This unit explores the historical shift from modernity to post-modernity underway since the late twentieth century, tracing: the history of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the emergence of the neo-liberal culture of enterprise that has characterised the global economy since the 1990s; the tension between notions of progress and their environmental consequences; and the nature of war and terror in the post-modern world. The unit also considers how post-modernity manifests in culture and the historical context of these cultural expressions. Post-modernism is explored as a manifestation of the historical shift to post-modernity, and the unit considers a range of post-modernist historical texts, and texts which challenge these interpretations.

Important Academic Dates

Information about important academic dates including deadlines for withdrawing from units are available at https://www.mq.edu.au/study/calendar-of-dates

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:

  • ULO1: Develop critical thinking and analytical skills.
  • ULO2: Identify and apply key historiographical concepts.
  • ULO3: Build personal and communication skills through participation in seminar discussion.
  • ULO4: Identify socially complex problems, formulate own questions, and work out paths of investigation/creative resolution.
  • ULO5: Reflect on how you have analysed information and solved problems, and incorporate lessons learned into future work.
  • ULO6: Treat information in an ethical manner.

Assessment Tasks

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update

Assessment details are no longer provided here as a result of changes due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Students should consult iLearn for revised unit information.

Find out more about the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and potential impacts on staff and students

General Assessment Information

Late Submission Penalty: “Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, (a) a penalty for lateness will apply – two (2) marks out of 100 will be deducted per day for assignments submitted after the due date – and (b) no assignment will be accepted more than seven (7) days (incl. weekends) after the original submission deadline. No late submissions will be accepted for timed assessments – e.g. quizzes, online tests.”

Delivery and Resources

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update

Any references to on-campus delivery below may no longer be relevant due to COVID-19.

Please check here for updated delivery information: https://ask.mq.edu.au/account/pub/display/unit_status

RESOURCES

MACQUARIE LIBRARY A comprehensive bibliography for this course, covering a range of themes and pertinent to both the research and tutorial essays is included in the list of research essay questions. Copies of these works will be found in the university library. Key books will be found in RESERVE. The reserve area of the library (level 2) holds essential books, videos and DVDs. It also holds items which are in high demand. It is for this reason that it is often the first port-of-call. However, there are restrictions on borrowing these items. Reserve items are only available on a short-term basis. Where an item is held in reserve this will be annotated on the catalogue. E-Reserve E-reserve is the place that you will check for journal articles, book chapters and lecture notes. These are documents which have been scanned and made available online.

WEBSITE

Interpreting Postmodernity: website created by Unit Convenor Mark Hearn to introduce the course and highlight research and relevant speeches, documents, images and readings. www.interpretingpostmodernity.net

 

RESEARCH ESSAY QUESTIONS

Due Date: Friday, 1 May 2020, midnight. Word Length: 3,000 words. Below is a list of essay questions with references for each, and recommended reading relevant to the lectures and the seminar program. Other relevant books or journal articles may be cited in addition to those recommended below. Students are required to cite at least eight books or journal articles relevant to the question in your essay discussion and in the bibliography. Web sites may be cited in addition to this minimum. Please number the pages of your essay and write out the question at the beginning of your essay, precisely as it is described below.

Writing your Essays: Please consult the Department of Modern History’s guidelines for writing essays in history. Pay particular attention to properly footnoting your essays.

Submitting your essay: Please submit your essay via Turnitin.

 

Topic 1: How have historians assessed the nature of postmodernity?

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, Verso London 1991 Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, Verso, London New York 1998. Frank Ankersmit and Hans Kellner (eds.), A New Philosophy of History, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1995 Zygmunt Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity, Routledge London 1992. Philip Barker, Michel Foucault, Edinburgh University Press Edinburgh 1998. Peter Beilharz (ed.), The Bauman Reader, Blackwell Oxford 2001 Elizabeth Deeds Ermath, ‘Agency in the Discursive Condition’, History and Theory, 40 December 2001 pp.34-58 Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth, ‘What If Time Is a Dimension of Events, Not an Envelope for Them?’ Time & Society, Vol. 19 No.1 March 2010. James Good and Irving Velody (ed.) The Politics of Postmodernity, Cambridge University Press 1998. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, Blackwell Publishers 1990. Kevin Hart, Postmodernism, A Beginner’s Guide, Oneworld Publications Oxford 2004. Sally Hart, ‘On Jacques Derrida: the Politics of Mourning’, Rethinking History, Vol.11 No.2 June 2007 pp.169-185. Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism, Routledge London 2002. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Verso London 1991. Fredric Jameson, The Cultural Turn, Selected Writings on the Postmodern, Verso London 1998 Charles Jencks, Critical Modernism, John Wiley & Sons Chichester UK 2007 Keith Jenkins, Re-thinking History, Routledge London 1991. Keith Jenkins (ed.), The Postmodern History Reader, Routledge London 1997. Keith Jenkins, Refiguring History: new thoughts on an old discipline, Routledge, London 2003 Keith Jenkins and Alun Munslow (eds.), The Nature of History Reader, Routledge London 2004. Helge Jordheim, ‘Against Periodization: Koselleck’s theory of Multiple Temporalities’, History and Theory, Vol.51 May 2012. Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History, Stanford  University 2002. David Lyon, Postmodernity, University of Minnesota Press 1999. Alun Munslow, Deconstructing History, Routledge London 1997. Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fracture, Harvard University Press 2011. William Schultz, ‘The Ambivalence Of Our Postmodern Condition: Lyotard’s Diagnosis and Prognosis’, http://www.costis.org/x/lyotard/schultz.htm Beverley Southgate, Postmodernism in History: Fear or Freedom? Routledge London 2003 Beverley Southgate, What is History For? Routledge London 2005. Dennis Smith, Zygmunt Bauman, Prophet of Postmodernity, Polity Press Oxford 1999. Willie Thompson, Postmodernism and History, Palgrave Macmillan London 2004 Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis, the Hidden Agenda of Modernity, University of Chicago Press 1992. John Zammito, ‘Koselleck’s Philosophy of Historical Time(s) and the practice of history’, History and Theory, Vol.43 February 2004.

 

Topic 2: How have historians assessed the characteristics of modernity in the twentieth century?

Anne Applebaum, Gulag, a history of the Soviet Camps, Penguin London 2004 Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, Polity Press London 1991. Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, Chatto and Windus, London 1999 Sheri Berman, The Primacy of Politics, Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century, Cambridge University Press 2006 Lawrence Besserman, The challenge of periodization: old paradigms and new perspectives, Garland, 1996. Goran Blix, ‘Charting the “transitional period”: the emergence of modern time in the nineteenth century’, History and Theory, 45 February 2006 pp.51-71 Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane (eds.), Modernism, Penguin Books London 1991. Momme Brodersen, Walter Benjamin: a Biography, Verso, London, 1996. Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich, Pan Macmillan London 2000. Peter Conrad, Modern Times, Modern Places, Thames and Hudson, London 1998 Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism, The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler, Palgrave Macmillan London 2007 Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Polity Press Oxford 1987, ch.I David Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity, Routledge London 2003. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, 1914-1991, Michael Joseph London 1994. Neil Levi, ‘Time, Culture, Nation: Australian Perspectives on Modernism, Modernity and Modernisation’, Australian Cultural History No.25 2006 pp.1-10. David Lyon, Postmodernity, University of Minnesota Press 1999 ch.3. Arthur Marwick, The Sixties, Oxford University Press 1998 Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 1899-1919, Collins Harvill London 1990 (ch.18) J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Perceptions of Modernity in Early Modern Historical Thinking’, Intellectual History Review, 17(1) 2007 pp.55-63. Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, Oxford University Press Oxford 1989. Tzvetan Todorov, Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps, Henry Holt, 1996 Tzvetan Todorov, Imperfect Garden: The Legacy of Humanism, Princeton University Press 2002 Bernard Wasserstein, Barbarism and Civilisation, A History of Europe in Our Time, Oxford University Press Oxford 2007. Christopher Wilk (ed.), Modernism, Designing a New World, 1914-1939, Victoria and Albert Museum London 2006.

 

Topic 3: Does postmodernism offer a new path for historical analysis, or are the advocates of “pomophobia” justified?

Robert Anchor, ‘The Quarrel between Historians and Postmodernists’, History and Theory, vol.38 no.1 February 1999. Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob, Telling the truth about History, Norton New York 1994. Richard J. Bernstein (ed.), Habermas and Modernity, MIT Press Cambridge 1985 Mark Bevir, Jill Hargis, and Sara Rushing (eds.), Histories of postmodernism, Routledge New York 2007. Ernst Breisach, On the Future of History: the Postmodernist Challenge and its Aftermath, University of Chicago Press Chicago 2003 Jonathan Clark, Our Shadowed Present, Modernism, Postmodernism and History, Stanford University Press, 2004. Sande Cohen, History Out of Joint, John Hopkins University Press Baltimore 2005. Penelope J. Corfield, ‘POST-Medievalism/Modernity/Postmodernity?’ Rethinking History, Volume 14, Issue 3, 2010. Geoff Eley and Keith Nield, ‘Starting over: The present, the post-modern and the moment of social history’, Social History, October 1995, Vol. 20 Issue 3. Terry Eagleton The Illusions of Postmodernism, Blackwell Publishers Oxford 1997. Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History, Granta London 2000 Stephen Garton, ‘On the defensive: postructuralism and Australian Cultural History’, in Hsu-Ming Teo and Richard White (eds.), Cultural History in Australia, University of New South Wales Press 2003. Andrew Gibson, review of Jonathan Clark, Our Shadowed Present: Modernism, Postmodernism and History, Clio, 35.2 (Spring 2006) Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Polity Press Oxford 1987, ch.IV. Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Postmodernism in the Forest’, in Eric Hobsbawm, On History, New Press New York 1997. Alex Honneth, ‘The other side of justice: Habermas and the ethical challenge of postmodernism’, in Stephen K. White (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Habermas, Cambridge University Press 1995. Patrick Joyce, ‘The Return of History: Postmodernism and the Politics of Academic History in Britain’, Past and Present, No.158 February 1998 pp.207-235. Ethan Kleinberg, ‘Haunting History: Deconstruction And The Spirit Of Revision’, History And Theory, Vol. 46 Issue 4 December 2007 William Outhwaite (ed.), The Habermas Reader, Polity Press Cambridge 1996. David D. Roberts, ‘Postmodernism and History: Missing the Missed Connections’, History and Theory, 44 May 2005 pp.240-252 [review of Breisach] Dave Robinson, Nietzsche and Postmodernism, Icon Books Ltd 1999 Michael S. Roth, ‘Classic Postmodernism’, History and Theory, 43 October 2004 pp.372-378 [review of Jenkins 2003] Heikki Saari, "On Frank Ankersmit's Post-Modernist Theory of Historical Narrativity". Rethinking History, vol. 9, no 1, March 2005: 5-21. Beverley Southgate, Postmodernism in History: Fear or Freedom? Routledge London 2003, ch.1. Beverley Southgate, What is History For? Routledge London 2005, chs.6-8. William Spanos, ‘Rethinking the Postmodernity of the Discourse of Postmodernism’, in Hans Bertens and Douwe Fokkema (eds.), International Postmodernism, Theory and Practice, John Benjamins Publishing Co. Amsterdam 1997. Martin Stuart-Fox, ‘Two views of the history of historiography and the nature of history’, History Australia, Volume 4, No. 2, December 2007. Wolfgang Welsch & Mike Sandbothe, ‘Postmodernity as a Philosophical Concept’, in Hans Bertens and Douwe Fokkema (eds.), International Postmodernism, Theory and Practice, John Benjamins Publishing Co. Amsterdam 1997. Keith Windschuttle, The Killing of History, Macleay Press 1996. 

 

Topic 4: Assess the response by historians to Foucault’s work. Do its weaknesses outweigh its benefits for enhancing our understanding of the past?

Andrew Barry, Foucault and Political Reason, Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalitie Ucl Press 1996 Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds.), The Foucault Effect: studies in governmentality: with two lectures by and an interview with Michel Foucault Harvester Wheatsheaf, London 1991 Mitchell Dean, Critical and Effective Histories, Routledge London 1994. Stuart Elden, Mapping the Present: Heidegger, Foucault and the project of a spatial history Continuum, London 2001. Thomas R. Flynn, ‘Foucault’s Mapping of History’, in Gary Gutting (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1994. Thomas R. Flynn, Sartre, Foucault and Historical Reason, Vols. 1 & 2 University of Chicago Press Chicago, 1997, 2005. Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic, Routledge London 1989. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, Routledge London 1989 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Penguin London 1987 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, Penguin Books Harmondsworth 1991. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, Vintage Books New York 1994 Michel Foucault, Ethics, Essential Works Vol.1, Penguin Books, London 1997. Michel Foucault, Aesthetics, Essential Works Vol.2, Allen Lane the Penguin Press, London 2000. Michel Foucault, Power, Essential Works Vol.3, Allen Lane the Penguin Press, London 2001 Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, Semiotexte Los Angeles 2001. Michel Foucault, Society Must be Defended, Allen Lane, London 2003 Michel Foucault, Abnormal, Picador New York 2003. Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Palgrave Macmillan, London 2004. Michel Foucault, The History of Madness, Routledge London 2006. Michel Foucault, The Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential Works of Foucault 1954 – 1984, The New Press, 2003. Peter Ghosh, ‘Citizen Or Subject? Michel Foucault In The History Of Ideas’, History of European Ideas, Vol. 24 No.2 1998, pp.113-159. Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Polity Press Oxford 1987, chs. IX, X. Ian Hacking, Historical Ontology, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass. 2002. Chs.4&5. Mark Hearn, ‘Developing a critical discourse: Michel Foucault and the cult of solidarity’, Critical Discourse Studies, Volume 5, Issue 1 February 2008, pp.21 –34. Todd May, ‘Foucault Now?’ Foucault Studies, No.3 November 2005 pp.65-76 Allan Megill, ‘The Reception of Foucault by Historians’, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol.48 No.1 Jan-March 1987 pp.117-141. J.G. Merquior, Foucault, Fontana Press London 1985. James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2000. Alun Munslow, Deconstructing History, Routledge London 1997 ch.7, ‘Michel Foucault and history’. Clare O’Farrell (ed.), Foucault: the Legacy, Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove 1997. Clare O’Farrell, Michel Foucault, Sage Publications 2005. Eric Paras, Foucault 2.0, Other Press NY 2006. Ulrich Schneider, ‘Sartre and Foucault Matching Each Other: What History Meant for both of them’, History and Theory 46 May 2007 pp.272-280 [review of Flynn] Alan Sheridan, Michel Foucault: the will to truth, Tavistock Publications, London 1980. Kevin Thompson, ‘Historicity And Transcendentality: Foucault, Cavaillès, And The Phenomenology Of The Concept’, History And Theory, Vol. 47 Issue 1 February 2008 || Willie Thompson, Postmodernism and History, Palgrave Macmillan London 2004 ch.5. Paul Veyne, ‘Foucault Revolutionizes History’, in Arnold I. Davidson (ed.) Foucault and his Interlocutors, University of Chicago Press Chicago 1997. Paul Veyne, Foucault: His Thought, His Character, John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2010 Keith Windschuttle, The Killing of History, Macleay Press 1996 ch.5.

 

Topic 5: How have historians assessed the opportunities and problems associated with applying the ‘linquistic turn’ to the study of gender history?

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, Verso London 1991. H. K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration, Routledge, London 1990. Alex Callinicos, Theories and Narratives, Reflections on the Philosophy of History, Duke University Press, Durham 1995. Miriam Elizabeth Burstein, Narrating Women's History in Britain, 1770-1902, Ashgate 2004. Elizabeth A. Clark, History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn, Harvard University Press, 2004 Laura Lee Downs, ‘If “Woman” is Just an Empty Category, The Why Am I Afraid to Walk Alone at Night? Identity Politics Meets the Postmodern Subject’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol.35 No.2 April 1993 pp.414-437 (see also the subsequent exchange between Scott and Downs in the same issue). Geoff Eley and Keith Nield, “Farewell to the Working Class?”, International Labor and Working Class History, No.57 Spring 2000. Michael L. Fitzhugh and William H. Leckie jr., ‘Agency, Postmodernism and the cause of change’, History and Theory, 40 December 2001 pp.59-81 John Frow, ‘Australian cultural studies: theory, story history’, Postcolonial Studies, Vol.10 No.1 2007 pp.59-75 E. Gagnier, Subjectivities, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1991. ‘New Approaches to Political History’, [Introduction, pp.20-56] Catherine Hall, Keith McClelland and Jane Rendall, Defining the Victorian Nation, Cambridge University Press Cambridge 2000. Stephen Garton, ‘On the defensive: poststructuralism and Australian Cultural History’, in Hsu-Ming Teo and Richard White (eds.), Cultural History in Australia, University of New South Wales Press 2003. Mark Hearn, ‘Writing a Life: John Dwyer’s Narrative Identity’, Rethinking History, Vol. 10 No.1 2006 Patrick Joyce, Democratic Subjects, The Self and the Social in nineteenth-century England, Cambridge University Press Cambridge 1994. Patrick Joyce (ed.), The Social in Question, Routledge, London 2002 Anthony Paul Kerby, Narrative and the Self, Indiana University Press 1991. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: race, gender, and sexuality in the colonial conquest, Routledge New York 1995. Brian McHale, ‘Talking Narrative: A Conversation with David Antin’, Narrative, Vol.12 No.1 January 2004. Nick Mansfield, Subjectivity: theories of the self from Freud to Haraway, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, 2000. Rosemary Mitchell, review of Miriam Elizabeth Burstein, Narrating Women's History in Britain, 1770-1902, Clio, 35.2 (Spring 2006) Alun Munslow, Narrative and History, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Elias Palti, ‘The “Return of the Subject” as a Historico-Intellectual Problem’, History and Theory, 43 February 2004 pp.57-82 Peter Poiana, “Narrative Identity”, Literature and Aesthetics, Vol.9 October 1999. Brian Roberts, Biographical Research, Open University Press Buckingham 2002. David Gary Shaw, ‘Happy in our chains? Agency and Language in the Postmodern Age’, History and Theory, 40 December 2001 pp.1-9. Margaret R. Somers and Gloria D. Gibson, “Reclaiming the Epistemological ‘Other’: Narrative and the Social Constitution of Identity”, in Craig Calhoun, (ed.), Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, Blackwell Publishers 1994. Margaret R. Somers, “Deconstructing and Reconstructing Class Formation Theory: Narrativity, Relational Analysis, and Social Theory” in Hall, J. R. (ed.), Reworking Class, Cornell University Press 1997. Joan W. Scott, ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis’, in Joan W. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, Columbia University Press NY 1988. Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: narratives of sexual danger in late-Victorian London, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1992 Hayden White, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality”, in W.J.T. Mitchell, (ed.), On Narrative, University of Chicago Press 1981. Geoffrey White, “Histories and Subjectivities”, Ethos, Vol.28 No.4 December 2000

 

Topic 6: Why did modernity declare war on nature? Assess the historiographical debate.

Kristin Asdal, ‘The problematic nature of nature: the post-constructivist challenge to environmental history’, History and Theory, 42 December 2003 pp.60-74 David Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature, Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany, Jonathan Cape, London 2006 Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, Polity Press London 1991. Stephen Boyden, The biology of civilisation: understanding human culture as a force in nature, UNSW Press Sydney 2004. Steve Coll, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, Allen Lane, 2012. William Cronon, (ed.) Uncommon ground: rethinking the human place in nature, W.W. Norton & Co. New York 1996. Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, Verso London 2006. Hubert L. Dreyfus, On the Internet, Routledge, London 2001. Francis Fukuyama, Our posthuman future: consequences of the biotechnology revolution, Profile Books, London 2002. Nicholas Game, When We Have Never Been Human, What is to be Done?’ Interview with Donna Haraway, Theory, Culture & Society, Vol 23 No.7-8 2006 pp.135-158 Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism, The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler, Palgrave Macmillan London 2007, ch.11. Donna J. Haraway, Simians, cyborgs and women: the reinvention of nature, Free Association, London 1991. Charles Jencks, Critical Modernism, John Wiley & Sons Chichester UK 2007, ch.5. Anthony D. King and Abidin Kusno, ‘On Be(ji)ing in the World: “Postmodernism”, “Globalisation” and the Making of Transnational Space in China’, in Arif Dirlik and Xudong Zhang (eds.), Postmodernism and China, Duke University Press 2000. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, Allen Lane London 2007, chs.19 &20. James Martin, The Meaning of the 21st Century, ch.2. J.R. McNeill, Something new under the sun: an environmental history of the twentieth century world, W.W. Norton & Company, New York 2000. J.R. McNeill, ‘Observations on the nature and culture of environmental history’, History and Theory, 42 December 2003 pp.5-43. Clive Ponting, A Green History of the World, Penguin, London 1992. Carroll Pursell, The Machine in America, a Social History of Technology, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2007. Carroll Pursell, Technology in Post-War America, Columbia University Press 2007. S. Ravi Rajan Modernizing Nature, Forestry and Imperial Eco-Development 1800-1950, Oxford University Press, 2006. Jeffrey Sachs, Common Wealth, Economics for a Crowded Planet, Penguin 2008. Joel A. Tarr and Gabriel Dupuy (eds.) Technology and the rise of the networked city in Europe and America, Philadelphia Temple University Press 1988. Nigel Thrift, ‘Donna Haraway’s Dreams’, Theory, Culture & Society, Vol 23 No.7-8 2006 pp.189-195 Robert Young, Darwin’s Metaphor: nature’s place in Victorian Culture, Cambridge University Press 1985

 

Topic 7: Why are ‘risk’ and ‘barbarism’ the paradigms of postmodern warfare? Assess the historiographical debate.

Gopal Balakrishnan, ‘Algorithms Of War’, New Left Review, 23, September-October 2003 http://www.newleftreview.org/A2467 (discussion of Bobbitt, Shield of Achilles). Jean Baudrillard, The gulf war did not take place, Power Publications, Sydney, 1995. Michael Bibby (ed.) The Vietnam war and postmodernity, University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, Mass 2000. Philippe le Billon, Wars of Plunder: Conflicts, Profits and the Politics of Resources, Columbia University Press 2012 Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History, Knopf 2002. David Chandler, ‘Risk and the biopolitics of global insecurity’, Conflict, Security & Development, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2010. Miriam Cooke, Women and the War Story, University of California Press, Berkeley 1996 Roger Cohen, ‘In Sarajevo, Victims of a ‘Postmodern’ War, New York Times, 21 May 1995 Christopher Coker, War in an Age of Risk, John Wiley and Sons 2009. Michael Dillon and Julian Reid, The Liberal Way of War: Killing to Make Life Live, Routledge, London, 2009 Michael Dillon, Biopolitics of security in the 21st century, Routledge 2011 Barbara Ehrenreich, Blood Rites, Origins and History of the Passions of War, Virago London 1997. Niall Ferguson, The War of the World, Allen Lane Penguin Books 2006; pp.626-646 re post 1989 conflicts.Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Barbarism: A User’s Guide’, in Eric Hobsbawm, On History, New Press New York 1997. Chalmers Johnson, The sorrows of empire: militarism, secrecy, and the end of the Republic, Metropolitan Book New York 2004. Alain Joxe, Empire of Disorder, Semiotext(e) 2002 Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, Allen Lane London 2007, part six. Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing, The New Press 2000. Ann Markusen et al, The Rise of the gunbelt: the military remapping of industrial America, Oxford University Press New York 1991 Errol Morris, The Fog of War, Sony Picture Classics DVD 2003, http://www.sony classics.com/fogofwar/ Benjamin Noys, review of Sven Lindqvist, History of Bombing, Rethinking History, Vol.6 No.2 2002 Mark Poster (ed.) Jean Baudrillard: selected writings, Polity Press, Cambridge 2001. Steven Rosefielde, Russia in the 21st century, the prodigal superpower, Cambridge University Press, New York 2005 Joe Sacco, Safe Area Gorazde, Jonathan Cape 2007 Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater, The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, Nation Books 2007. John Rodden, ‘Heuristics, Hypocrisy, and History without Lessons: Nuremberg, War Crimes, and “Shock and Awe”’, Journal of Human Rights, Volume 7, Issue 1 January 2008 , pp.34 – 43. P.W. Singer, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the Twenty-first Century, Penguin 2011 Susan Rubin Suleiman, ‘The Politics of Postmodernism after the Wall (or, What do we do when the ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ Starts?)’, in Hans Bertens and Douwe Fokkema (eds.), International Postmodernism, Theory and Practice, John Benjamins Publishing Co. Amsterdam 1997. Tzvetan Todorov, The new world disorder: reflections of a European, Polity Press Cambridge 2005. Tim Weiner, ‘Lockheed and the Future of Warfare’, New York Times, November 28, 2004

 

Topic 8: Is Islamist terrorism a postmodern phenomenon? Assess the historiographical debate.

Mervyn F. Bendle, ‘Existential Terrorism: Civil Society and its Enemies’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol.52, No.1 2006 pp.115-130 Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Fear, Polity Press Oxford 2006 Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism, WW Norton NY 2004 Philip Bobbitt, Terror And Consent, The Wars for the Twenty-First Century, Alfred A. Knopf 2008. Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History, Knopf 2002. Birgit Brauchler, ‘Religious Conflicts in Cyberage’, Citizenship Studies, Vol.11 No.4 September 2007 pp.329-347 Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda, Casting a Shadow of Terror, I.B. Tauris London 2003. Jason Burke, The 9/11 Wars, Allen Lane, London 2011. Michael Burleigh, Blood and rage: a cultural history of terrorism, HarperPress, London 2008. Matthew Carr, The infernal machine: a history of terrorism, New Press, New York 2006.Gérard Chaliand and Arnaud Blin (eds.), The History of Terrorism, From Antiquity to al Qaeda, University of California Press, 2007 Neal Curtis, ‘Nihilism, Liberalism and Terror’, Theory, Culture & Society, Vol 21 No.3 2004 pp.141-157 Mike Davis, Buda’s Wagon, A Brief History of the Car Bomb, Verso 2007. Jodi Dean, ‘Secrecy since September 11’, interventions, Vol.6 No.3 2004 pp.362-380. Jean-Pierre Filiu, ‘Hizb ut-Tahrir and the fantasy of the caliphate’ Le Monde Diplomatique, June 2008 http://mondediplo.com/ Nicholas Fotion, Boris Kashnikov, and Joanne K. Lekea, Terrorism: the new world disorder, Continuum, London 2007. Frank Furedi, Invitation to terror: the expanding empire of the unknown, Continuum, London 2007. Jeff Goodwin, ‘Explaining Revolutionary Terrorism’, in John Foran, David Lane, and Andreja Zivkovic (eds.), Revolution in the making of the modern world, Routledge, New York 2007. John Gray, Al Qaeda and What it Means to be Modern, Faber and Faber, London 2004 Adrian Guelke, Terrorism and Global Disorder, I.B.Tauris London 2006 Jurgen Habermas, Philosophy in a time of terror: dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2003 Eric Hobsbawm, Globalisation, Democracy and Terrorism, Little Brown NY 2007 Solomon Hughes, War on terror, inc.: corporate profiteering from the politics of fear, Verso, London 2007. Samuel P. Huntington, The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order, Simon & Schuster, New York 2003 International Crisis Group, Understanding Islamism, 2005: http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/middle-east-north-africa/north-africa/ 037-understanding-islamism.aspx David Martin Jones, Globalisation and the new terror: the Asia Pacific dimension, Edward Elgar Pub., Cheltenham 2004. Michael J. Mazarr, Unmodern Men in the Modern World, Radical Islam, Terrorism, and the War on Modernity, Cambridge University Press, 2007 Muqtedar Khan, ‘Islam, Postmodernity and Freedom: Answers to Questions posed by Discourse Magazine’ October 2002. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, Allen Lane London 2007 Robert Jay Lifton, Destroying the world to save it: Aum Shinrikyo, apocalyptic violence, and the new global terrorism. Henry Holt and Co., New York 1999. Julie Mertus & Tazreena Sajjad, ‘Human Rights and Human Insecurity: The Contributions of US Counterterrorism’, Journal of Human Rights, Volume 7, Issue 1 January 2008, pp.2-24. W.J.T. Mitchell, ‘Picturing Terror: Derrida’s Autoimmunity’, Critical Inquiry, 33 Winter 2007 pp.277-290 Pankaj Mishra, From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia, Allen Lane 2012 John Robb, Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization, Wiley, 2007. Edward Said, ‘Adrift in Similarity’, in Edward Said, From Oslo to Iraq and the Road Map, Pantheon Books NY 2004. Paul L. Williams, The Al Qaeda connection: international terrorism, organized crime, and the coming apocalypse, Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY 2005.

 

Topic 9: Has neo-liberalism defined postmodernity? Assess the historiographical debate.

Joyce Appleby, The Relentless Revolution, A History of Capitalism, W. W. Norton & Company NY Ulrich Beck, The Brave New World of Work, Polity Press, London 2000. Ulrich Beck, Power in the Global Age: A New Global Political Economy, John Wiley and Sons 2005. Ulrich Beck, World at Risk, John Wiley and Sons London 2008. Michael C. Behrent, ‘Liberalism Without Humanism: Michel Foucault And The Free-Market Creed, 1976–1979’ Modern Intellectual History, Volume 6, Issue 03, November 2009, pp 539-568. Katja Franko Aas, Globalization & Crime, Sage Publications, London 2007 Katja Franko Aas, Helene Oppen Gundhus and Heidi Mork Lomell (eds.), Technologies of Insecurity: the surveillance of everyday life, Routledge-Cavendish, Abingdon, 2008. Jamie Bartlett, The Dark Net, William Heinemann London 2014. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity, Polity Press 2000. Iain Boal and Michael Watts, ‘The Liberal International’, Radical Philosophy, No.140 Nov/Dec 2006 (review of David Harvey, A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism). Antony Bryant, ‘Liquid Modernity, Complexity and Turbulence’, Theory, Culture & Society, Vol 24 No.1 2007 pp.127-135 Steve Coll, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, Allen Lane, 2012. Mitchell Dean, Governmentality, Power and Rule in Modern Society, Sage Publications London, 2010. Michael Dillon and Luis Lobo-Guerrero, ‘Biopolitics of Security in the 21st Century: An Introduction’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2, 2008 Wim Van de Donk [et al.], Cyberprotest: new media, citizens, and social movements, Routledge London, 2004. Nick Dyrenfurth, ‘John Howard's Hegemony of Values: The Politics of 'Mateship' in the Howard Decade’, Australian Journal of Political Science, June 2007, Vol. 42 Issue 2. Anthony Elliott (ed.), The Contemporary Bauman, Routledge 2007 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, Lectures at the College de France, 1977-1978, Palgrave Macmillan 2007. Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, Lectures at the College de France, 1978-1979, Palgrave Macmillan 2008. Francis Fukuyama, The great disruption: human nature and the reconstitution of social order, Free Press, New York 1999. Masha Gessen, The man without a face: the unlikely rise of Vladimir Putin, Riverhead Books, NY 2013. Misha Glenny, McMafia, Crime Without Frontiers, The Bodley Head, London 2008. Doug Guthrie, China and Globalization, The Social, Economic and Political Transformation of Chinese Society, 3rd Edition, Routledge, 2012 David Harvey, A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism, Oxford University Press Oxford 2005. Abdirahman A. Hussein, Edward Said, Criticism and Society, Verso London 2002. Fredric Jameson, The Cultural Turn, Selected Writings on the Postmodern, Verso London 1998, ch.1 Carol Johnson, ‘John Howard's 'Values' and Australian Identity’, Australian Journal of Political Science, June 2007, Vol. 42 Issue 2. Patrick Joyce, (ed.), Class, Oxford University Press 1995, section D, ‘The History of the Social’. Patrick Joyce, The Rule of Freedom, Verso, London 2003. Patrick Joyce, ‘The Potency of Things, Cultural History and the Material World’, in Niall O Ciosain (ed.), Explaining Change in Cultural History, University College Dublin Press, 2005. Tony Judt, ‘The Wrecking Ball of Innovation’, New York Review of Books, Vol.54 No.18 6 December 2007 (review of Robert Reich’s Supercapitalism) John Kampfner, Freedom for Sale: How We Made Money and Lost Our Liberty, Simon & Schuster 2009 Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, Allen Lane London 2007 Marie Mendras, Russian Politics: The Paradox of a Weak State, Columbia University Press 2012 Moisés Naím, Illicit: how smugglers, traffickers and copycats are hijacking the global economy, Doubleday, New York, 2005. Hsiao-Hung Pai, Scattered Sand: The Story of China's Rural Migrants Verso 2012. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Belknap Harvard University Press Cambridge 2014. Griselda Pollock, ‘Liquid Modernity and Cultural Analysis’, Theory, Culture & Society, Vol 24 No.1 2007 pp.111-116. Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: the Surreal Heart of the New Russia, Public Affairs, NY 2014. Robert Reich, Supercapitalism, The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life, Alfred A. Knopf 2007. Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fracture, Harvard University Press 2011. Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom, Cambridge University Press Cambridge 1999. Mark B. Salter, ‘When the exception becomes the rule: borders, sovereignty, and citizenship’, Citizenship Studies, August 2008, Vol. 12 Issue 4; Guy Standing, The Corruption of Capitalism, Biteback Publishing London 2016; Keith Tribe, ‘The Political Economy of Modernity: Foucault’s College de France lectures of 1978 and 1979’, Economy and Society, Vol.38 No.4 November 2009 Rob Watts, ‘Governmentality and Modernity: An Essay in Thinking Governmentality’, Arena, No.2 1993/94 pp.103-157 Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level, Why Equality is Better for Everyone, Allen Lane, 2010 John Wiseman, Global Nation? Australia and the Politics of Globalization, Cambridge University Press Melbourne 1998

 

Topic 10: How effectively does Jameson’s critique of ‘late capitalism’ interpret the historical development of postmodern culture?

Glenn Adamson and Jane Pavitt (eds.), Postmodernism: Style and Subversion, 1970-90, V&A Publishing London 2011. Ben Agger, ‘iTime: Labor and life in a smartphone era’, Time & Society, Vol. 20 No.1 March 2011. Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, Verso, London New York 1998. Zygmunt Bauman, ‘Liquid Arts’, Theory, Culture & Society, Vol 24 No.1 2007 pp.117-126 J.G. Ballard, Extreme Metaphors, Interviews with J.G. Ballard 1967-2008, Fourth Estate 2012 Jeannette Baxter, J.G.Ballard: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, Continuum Critical Perspectives, 2008. Marie-Claire Bergère, Shanghai, China's Gateway to Modernity, Stanford University Press, 2009. Will Brooker (ed.), The Blade Runner Experience: the legacy of a science fiction classic, Wallflower, London 2005. Ian Buchanan, Fredric Jameson: live theory, Continuum, London, 2006. Ian Buchanan (ed.), Jameson on Jameson: conversations on cultural Marxism, Duke University Press Durham, N.C 2007. Clint Burnham, The Jamesonian unconscious: the aesthetics of Marxist theory, Duke University Press, Durham 1995. Scott Bukatman, Blade Runner, British Film Institute Modern Classics Series London 2003 Hermann Danuser, ‘On Postmodernism in Music’, in Hans Bertens and Douwe Fokkema (eds.), International Postmodernism, Theory and Practice, John Benjamins Publishing Co. Amsterdam 1997. Arif Dirlik and Xudong Zhang (eds.), Postmodernism and China, Duke University Press 2000, chs.5&6. John N. Duvall, ‘Troping History: Modernist Residue in Fredric Jameson's Pastiche and Linda Hutcheon's Parody’ Style, Fall, Vol.33 1999. Brandon W. Forbes and George A. Reisch (eds.), Radiohead and philosophy: fitter happier more deductive, Open Court, Chicago, 2009. Andrzej Gasiorek, J.G. Ballard, Manchester University Press, 2005. Dai Griffiths, OK Computer, Continuum London 2004. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, Blackwell Publishers 1990. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Verso London 1991. Fredric Jameson, The Cultural Turn, Selected Writings on the Postmodern, Verso London 1998. Douglas Kellner and Sean Homer (eds.), Fredric Jameson: a critical reader, Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2004. David Lyon, Postmodernity, University of Minnesota Press 1999 ch.5 Arthur Marwick, The Sixties, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1998 Jim McGuigan, Modernity and Postmodern Culture, Open University Press, Berkshire 2006. Gustav Metzger, ‘The Third Culture’, Theory, Culture & Society, Vol 24 No.1 2007 pp.137-145 James Peterson, ‘Postmodernism and Film’, in Hans Bertens and Douwe Fokkema (eds.), International Postmodernism, Theory and Practice, John Benjamins Publishing Co. Amsterdam 1997. Jonathon Ritter and J Martin Daughtry, Music in the post-9/11 world, Routledge 2007 Robert Rosenstone, History on Film/Film on History, Pearson 2006 M.W. Smith, Reading simulacra: fatal theories for postmodernity, State University of New York Press, Albany c2001. Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau (eds.), Moving Data: The iPhone and the Future of Media, Columbia University Press 2012 Jonathan Watts, When a Billion Chinese Jump, Faber & Faber London 2010, Ch.8

 

Topic 11: How has the fall of the Berlin Wall led historians to rethink the history of modernity? 

Timothy Garton Ash, ‘Velvet Revolution: The Prospects’, New York Review of Books, Vol.56 No.19 December 3, 2009 Timothy Garton Ash, The magic lantern: the revolution of '89 witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague, Vintage Books, 1993. Paul Betts,1989 At Thirty: A Recast Legacy’, Past and Present, ‘Viewpoint’, no.244 August 2019. John Duberstein, A Velvet Revolution: Vaclav Havel and the Fall of Communism, Morgan Reynolds Publishing, 2006. Patrick Finney, ‘Beyond the Postmodern Moment?’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol.40 No.1 2005. Harry Harootunian, ‘Remembering the Historical Present’, Critical Inquiry, 33 Spring 2007 pp.471-494. Vaclav Havel, The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice, Alfred A. Knopf New York 1997. Vaclav Havel, To the castle and back, Vintage London 2008. Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Looking Forward: History and the Future’, in Eric Hobsbawm, On History, New Press New York 1997. Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Asking the big why questions: History, a new age of reason’, Le Monde diplomatique, December 2004. Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism, Routledge London 2002, ‘Epilogue’. John Keane Vaclav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts, Basic Books, NY 2001. Jeffrey Kopstein, ‘1989 as a Lens for the Communist Past and Post-communist Future’, Contemporary European History, Volume 18, Special Issue 03, August 2009, pp 289-302. Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History, Stanford University 2002. Paul Gordon Lauren, ‘History and Human Rights: People and Forces in Paradoxical Interaction’, Journal of Human Rights, Volume 7, Issue 2 April 2008, pp.91 - 103 David Lowenthal, ‘The Past of the Future’, in Keith Jenkins et. al. (eds.), Manifestos for History, Routledge London 2007. David Lyon, Postmodernity, University of Minnesota Press 1999 ch.6. Charles S. Maier, ‘What Have We Learned since 1989?’ Contemporary European History, Volume 18, Special Issue 03, August 2009, pp 253-269 Seumas Milne, The Revenge of History: The Battle for the 21st Century, Verso 2012 Pankaj Mishra, From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia, Allen Lane 2012. Cees Nooteboom, Roads to Berlin, MacLehose Press 2012. James F. Pontuso Vaclav Havel: Civic Responsibility in the Postmodern Age, Rowman and Littlefield Lanham MD 2004. David Priestland, The Red Flag: Communism and the Making of the Modern World, Penguin Books Ltd, 2009. Hartmund Rosa, ‘Social Acceleration: Ethical and Political Consequences of a Desynchronized High-Speed Society’, Constellations, Vol.10 No.1, 2003. Victor Sebestyen, Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire, Phoenix London 2010. Beverley Southgate, What is History For? Routledge London 2005. Beverley Southgate, ‘Memories into Something New: Histories for the Future’, Rethinking History Vol.11 No.2 June 2007 pp.187-199 David Staley, ‘A History of the Future’, History and Theory, 41 December 2002 pp.72-89 Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Vintage Books London 2010. Frederick Taylor, The Berlin Wall: 13 August 1961- 9 November 1989, Bloomsbury, London 2009; Philipp Ther, Europe Since 1989, Princeton University Press, 2016; Vladimir Tismaneanu, ‘The Revolutions of 1989: Causes, Meanings, Consequences’, Contemporary European History, Volume 18, Special Issue 03, August 2009, pp 271-288 Tzvetan Todorov, Hope and Memory: Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Princeton University Press 2003

Unit Schedule

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update

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MHIS3075 Seminar Program 2020

 

Week One (24 February)

Introduction and allocation of seminar presentation topics.

 

Week Two (2 March)

Topic 1: Interpreting Postmodernity

Definitions of ‘The Problem of Periodization’; Stuart Jeffries, ‘Postmodernism: the 10 key moments in the birth of a movement’ guardian.co.uk, 20 September 2011; Tim Blanning, The Romantic Revolution, ‘Conclusion’; Beverley Southgate, What is History For?, ch.6.

Seminar discussion questions: What are the characteristics of postmodernism? Is postmodernity an historical period, and does it have historical precedents?

 

Week Three (9 March)

Topic 2: Creative Destruction: Modernity and Modernism

David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, ch.2; Philipp Blom, The Vertigo Years, ‘Ritual, Myths and Masks’, pp.286-89; Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, ‘War Communism as Utopia’ pp.46-52; Colin Marshall, ‘Pruitt-Igoe: the troubled high-rise that came to define urban America’, Guardian, 22 April 2015.

Seminar discussion questions: How does Harvey characterise the project of modernity? Why is Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring ‘barbaric’? How did Bolshevik ‘War Communism’ reflect the modern project? Does the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe complex represent the moment ‘modern architecture died’?

 

Week Four (16 March)

Topic 3: Pomophobia? The Critics of Postmodern Interpretation

Beverley Southgate, Postmodernism in History: Fear or Freedom? ch.1; Willie Thompson, Postmodernism and History, ch.1; Richard J. Evans In Defence of History, Introduction; Review of In Defence of History by Professor Antony Easthope, Manchester Metropolitan University, Textual Practice, vol.12, no. 3 (Winter 1998).

Seminar discussion questions: How does Southgate suggest that historians can overcome ‘pomophobia’? Is Thompson right to argue that postmodernism ‘has nothing to offer historians? Why did Evans argue that postmodernism generated a ‘crisis’ for historians? Why does Easthope assert that ‘Richard J. Evans did not really write In Defence of History’?

 

Week Five (23 March)

Topic 4: Fearless Speech: Michel Foucault’s History of the Present

Edward Said review of Power, New York Times, 17 December 2000; Michel Foucault, ‘Lives of Infamous Men’, in M. Foucault, Power, Essential Works Vol.3; Clare O’Farrell, Michel Foucault, ch.5; J. G. Merquior, Foucault, ch.10.

Seminar discussion questions: Why does Said argue that Foucault leaves no reader unchanged? What does Foucault suggest that we can learn from the ‘dark legends’ of the lives of infamous men? How does O’Farrell suggest historians can benefit from Foucault’s methods? Why does Merquior suggest she’s wasting her time?

 

Week Six (30 March)

Topic 5: Poststructuralism: the Narrative Subject and the ‘Linguistic Turn’

Alun Munslow, Narrative and History ch.1; Patrick Joyce, Democratic Subjects, ch.12, ‘Narrative and History’; Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight, Introduction.

Seminar discussion questions: Why does Munslow argue that reality and representation work together in the historians’ construction of the past? Why does Joyce argue that the focus on narrative has destabilised the study of history? How does Walkowitz argue that poststructuralism has effected the historical interpretations of power and gender?

 

Week Seven (6 April)

Topic 6: Progress and Nature

Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, ch.1 pp.26-42, ‘The scandal of ambivalence’; David Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature, ‘Introduction’, pp.3-12; ‘Attacks paid for by big business are driving science into a dark era', The Observer, 19 February 2012; ‘Rachel Carson and the legacy of Silent Spring’, The Observer, 27 May 2012.

Seminar discussion questions: Why in modernity did nature stand for ‘the other of humanity’, as Zygmunt Bauman argues? Why does Blackbourn claim that writing about the shaping of the German landscape is to write about how modern Germany was shaped? Has resistance to climate change undermined Rachel Carson’s legacy?

 

Week Eight (27 April)

Topic 7: Postmodern War

Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Barbarism: A User’s Guide’, in On History; Red Cross Survey; Christopher Coker, War in an Age of Risk, review by Claudia Aradau, Ethics & International Affairs, Volume 24.1 (Spring 2010), Carnegie Council; David Chandler, ‘Risk and the biopolitics of global insecurity’, Conflict, Security & Development, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2010; Tim Weiner, ‘Lockheed and the Future of Warfare’, New York Times, 28 November 2004.

Seminar discussion questions: Why are ‘risk’ and ‘barbarism’ the paradigms of postmodern warfare? Can Lockheed help lift ‘the fog of war’ and reduce risk?

 

Week Nine (4 May)

Topic 8: Postmodern Terror

Christopher Coker, ‘9/11: The Glass Shatters’, in Eamonn McCabe, Decade, Phaidon, 2001; Muqtedar Khan, ‘Islam, Postmodernity and Freedom: Answers to Questions posed by Discourse Magazine’ October 2002; Osama bin Laden, 'Letter to America', [extract] Observer.co.uk, Sunday 24 November 2002; Pankaj Mishra, ‘How to think about Islamic State’, Guardian, 24 July 2015.

Seminar discussion questions: How has the nature of political terror changed in the late twentieth century? Have western nations developed effective strategies to counter it? Is Khan right to argue that terrorism is ‘the most spectacular postmodern manifestation’? Why does Mishra describe Islamic State as a ‘postmodern collage’?

 

Week Ten (11 May)

Topic 9: The Enterprising Citizen: Neo-Liberalism

Misha Glenny, McMafia, ch.4, ‘Xanadu I’; Misha Glenny, ‘Into the Wild’, [review of The Dark Net], London Review of Books, Vol.37 No.6 19 March 2015; Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom, ch.4, ‘Advanced Liberalism’; Extracts of the speech by John Howard ‘Workplace Relations Reform: The Next Logical Step’; Guy Standing, The Corruption of Capitalism, Preface.

Seminar discussion questions: Does the globalization of organised crime reflect the condition of postmodernity? What are the chief characteristics of advanced or neo-liberalism? Does neo-liberalism create 'enterprise workers' or the 'Precariat'?

 

Week Eleven (18 May)

Topic 10: Fitter, Happier? Postmodern Culture

Fredric Jameson, The Cultural Turn, Selected Writings on the Postmodern, chapter 1; Edward Mendelson, ‘In the Depths of the Digital Age', New York Review of Books, 23 June 2016; J.G. Ballard, Crash, ‘Introduction’; ‘Fitter Happer’, Radiohead, OK Computer; Dai Griffiths, OK Computer, ‘Words’, pp.81-87; Scott Bukatman, Blade Runner, ch.3, ‘Replicants and Mental Life’.

Seminar discussion questions: Why does Jameson argue that postmodern culture reflects the logic of late capitalism? Has the ‘real’ been displaced by digital technology in postmodern culture? How do works such as Crash, ‘Fitter Happier’ and Blade Runner reflect a response to postmodernity?

 

Week Twelve (25 May)

Topic 11: Opening the Wall: Postmodern Reflections on Modernity

Timothy Snyder, ‘Hitler’s world may not be so far away’, Guardian, 16 September 2015; Václav Havel, “The End of the Modern Era”, Speech to the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, 4 February 1992; Robert MacFarlane, ‘Generation Anthropocene’, Guardian, 1 April 2016; Tzvetan Todorov, Hope and Memory, ‘Epilogue’.

Seminar discussion questions: What lessons does Snyder suggest should be drawn from the history of twentieth century totalitarianism? Why does Havel argue that we must face the future with ‘a new, post-modern face’? Can the project of modernity adapt to the Anthropocene? How does Todorov suggest that we should take the history of the twentieth century into the twenty-first?

 

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