HIST 301D(S) Varieties of Historical Thinking

This course is designed to acquaint students with some of the ways historians have thought about the past. Beginning with Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War and ending with Simon Schama's recent exercise in historical imagination, Dead Certainties, the work of eleven historians will be studied closely and critically over the course of the semester. In the process, students not only will become familiar with various important historical approaches but also will be encouraged to examine their own assumptions about the past and about how and why-or even if-we know it.
We will meet weekly to define, understand, and assess the different ways historians considered in the course have thought about the past. In preparation for class discussion, students are to produce a one-page critical response to the assigned reading each week, which will form the basis for class discussion. In addition to writing ten critical responses, students are required to make an oral presentation of approximately twenty minutes on a professor they have had in a history course at Williams College.
Restricted to Junior History Majors.

Hour: KOHUT