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I tell my dad "There's no such thing as a weekend in grad school," and, if you need proof, I received a paper assignment at 10:53 Saturday night and read it right away. The assignment, which I've pasted below, call on us to analyse the historical method in one of eight essays. I've already read all of Stephen Kern's amazing The Culture of Time and Space, so I'll probably base my essay on the selection from that book. Unfortunately, my copy is in Tulsa, so I'll probably work from a poorly-Xeroxed version.

RTF 395--Theory and Literature

Spring 2003 Janet Staiger

UTA--GRAD

Paper 3

DUE: Tuesday, May 6, noon, my RTF mailbox. NO late papers.

LENGTH: 7-10 typed, double-spaced (at least 10-point font and double-space)

The Assignment
Write an essay describing the historical method used in one of the essays below. Then discuss (for at least one third of your essay) how you would apply that method to a research question in the area you are studying.
In considering the historical method of the selected essay, you might (but are not obliged to) look at:
1) The overall organizational method of the essay. Does it employ an overall structure of an argument or a narrative? For the narrative, does differences between the plot and story illuminate the essay's structure? Referring to Hayden White's typology, is the explanation idiographic, contextualist, mechanistic, or organicist?
2) The causal logic. For instance, are the historical events presented as causally linked or co-existent within a broader historical period.
3) The cause force. To what does the essay attribute agency? What is the essay's theoretical debts (say, for example, to sociological or psychological theory)?
4) The number of causes.
5) The type of causal change. Does the essay consider its historical object to occur within periods? How does the essay demarcate periods? How does it represent change?

The Logistics

Two sets of these essays will be in a folder in the RTF Media Library (CMA 5.130) no later than 5pm Friday, April 18. You may read them there. One set will be permanent. No part of it may be removed from the Library. The second set (or parts of it) may be removed for up to one hour to do photocopying.

Anzaldúa, Gloria. "O.K. Momma, Who the Hell Am I?: an Interview with Luisah Teish," in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, ed. Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa. Watertown, MA: Persephone Press, 1981. Pp. 221-31.

Benjamin, Walter. "Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century," in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. Trans. Edmund Jephocott. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978. Pp. 146-62.

Darnton, Robert. "Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Séverin," in The Great Cat Massacre and other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York: Vintage Books, 1984. Pp. 75-104.

Greenblatt, Stephen. "Fiction and Friction" in Shakespearean Negotiations: the Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988. Pp. 66-93

Kern, Stephen. "Speed," in The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. Pp. 109-30.

Kerr, Louise Año Nuevo. "Chicanas in The Great Depression," in Between Borders: Essays on Mexicana/Chicana History, ed. Adelaida R. Del Castillo. Encino, CA: Floricanto Press, 1990. Pp. 257-68.

Noble, David F. "The Wedding of Science to the Useful Arts--III: The Emergence of the Professional Engineer," in America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977. Pp. 33-49.

Somerville, Siobhan. "Scientific Racism and the Emergence of the Homosexual Body," Journal of the History of Sexuality 5, no. 2 (1994): 243-66.