Seminar in Historical Analysis (405-0-22)

Topic

Agency

Instructors

Amy Stanley
8474676722
Harris Hall - Room 203

Meeting Info

Harris Hall room 101: Thurs 2:00PM - 5:00PM

Overview of class

Topic: Agency

This seminar is about the concept of "agency" in historical writing. What does "agency" actually mean - is the capacity for resistance, the freedom to make choices, or just the ability to affect historical events? Most of us think we have agency, but do we really? Can historians "give people back their agency"? And who can we think of as having agency - do objects have agency? Do animals? What about very small children? Our readings will explore these questions from many angles. We will consider what "agency" means within specific fields of scholarship, concentrating on enslaved people, colonized people, peasants, and premodern women. Then we will consider how historians in other fields, particularly environmental history and the history of material culture, have repurposed and expanded the concept. Meanwhile, we will all exercise our own agency (if we decide we have it) in our analysis and discussion of this scholarship.

Learning Objectives

To understand the concept of "agency" as it appears in historical scholarship, to learn how to write graduate level analytical essays