Most of the assigned readings are available for purchase at the UVM bookstore and are also on reserve at Bailey/Howe library. A few short selections will be distributed in class. There is no textbook for the course, but I shall post my lectures to the course website. You might also wish to consult the following general studies in intellectual history, which are also on reserve at the library:
Roland Stromberg, European Intellectual History since
1789 (Prentice-Hall)
Marvin Perry, An Intellectual History of Modern Europe
(Houghton-Mifflin)
Norman & Mindy Cantor, The American Century (Harpter)
Principal topics and readings
week 1 (17-19 january) the ancient and the modern in historical perspective
a gallery of portraits (course website)
week 2 (22-26 january) The Renaissance
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, trans David Wootton (Hackett), 5-80
week 3 (29 january-2 february) The Enlightenment: the critique of traditional society
Voltaire, Candide, ed. John Butt (Penguin)
1st theme paper due, friday, 2 february
week 4 (5-9 february) The Enlightenment: the new science of history
Giambattista Vico, The New Science, trans. T. Bergin
and M. Fisch (Cornell Univ.), select passages (handout)
Immanuel Kant, On History, ed. Lewis Beck (Bobbs-Merrill),
3-26, 53-84
week 5 (12-16 february) The birth of ideology in the French Revolution
film "Danton"
week 6 (21-23 february) Romanticism
recess, monday, 19 february
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young
Werther (Vintage)
2d theme paper due, friday, 23 february
week 7 (26 february-2 march) European liberalism and the revolutionary tradition
illustrated lecture - revolutionary tradition
week 8 (5-9 march) Marx, marxism, and the European labor movement
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist
Manifesto, ed. Samuel Beer (Harlan Davidson), 8-46
mid-semester exam, friday, 9 march
week 9 (12-16 march) religious thought in the 19th century
Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Alastair
Hannay (Penguin)
Thomas Hardy, "God's Funeral," in A. N. Wilson,
God's Funeral (Norton), pp. xiii-xiv, 3-15
week 10 (19-23 march) spring recess
week 11 (26-30 march) the Russian intellectual tradition
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Grand Inquisitor (and related
chapters from The Brothers Karamazov), ed. Charles Guignon (Hackett)
research portfolio (including statement of problem,
outline, and working bibliography) due friday, 30 march
week 12 (2-6 april) psychology and the Freudian technique of psycho-analysis
Sigmund Freud, Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans. James Strachey (Norton)
week 13 (9-13 april) World War II and the Holocaust
Primo Levi, Survival at Auschwitz, trans. Stuart
Woolf (Simon & Schuster)
rough draft, research paper due, friday, 13 april
week 14 (16-20 april) Existentialism
Jean-Paul Sartre, "The Wall," "Existentialism is a Humanism," and "Marxism and Existentialism," in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New American Library), 281-99, 345-74 (handout)
week 15 (23-27 april) intellectual resistance to Soviet-inspired communism in eastern Europe during the era of the Cold War
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being,
trans. Michael Heim (Harper & Row)
final draft, research paper due, friday, 27 april
week 16 (30 april-1 may) postmodern thought
Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,"
in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, ed. Donald Bouchard (Cornell Univ.
Press), 139-64 (handout)
René Magritte, illustrated lecture
last class, wednesday, 1 may
final examination tuesday, 8 may at 4:00 pm (2 hours)