Fall 2004

History J495

Senior Capstone Seminar

Cities, Buildings, and Power.

Instructor: Dr. Kevin C. Robbins Time: T/Th. 1:00-2:15 p.m..

Associate Professor Place: CA 537

History/Philanthropic Studies

IUPUI

Office: CA 504Q/503Q.

Office Phone: 317-274-5819; Fax: 317-278-7800.

E-Mail: krobbin1@iupui.edu

Office Hours: T/Th. 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. (and by Appointment).

Course Description: This research seminar is designed as a senior-level capstone to an undergraduate history major at IUPUI Graduating seniors in the department should consider this course the ultimate test of the skills they have acquired and mastered while studying at this university. It is the instructor's belief that intensive study of classical, medieval, and early modern European urban history, in its spatial, material, social, architectural, and cultural dimensions, superbly fits the interdisciplinary pedagogical purposes of a senior capstone seminar. Cities, in their dynamic forms and contending cultures over time, are one of the most challenging and rewarding of all research topics. The constituent parts of cityscapes, ancient and modern, offer excellent opportunities for trans-disciplinary and cross-cultural historical research and writing. This course will enable students to question constantly what the core meanings of "urban history" and "cultural history" may be.

There are two main objectives inherent in the course design. First, the course will familiarize all students, through regular class discussion of all assigned readings, with recent, incisive, interdisciplinary analyses of the formation, morphogenesis, construction, and socio-cultural development of European cities from classical through early modern times. Crucial themes addressed here include the sites of cities, human physiological and psychological responses to city life, the development of cities as theatres for human political action, the ceremonies, rituals, and folkways of urbanites, elite building programs within European capital cities, and interactions over time between the infrastructure and the intellectual and cultural life of metropolitan communities. These readings will enable each student to develop his or her own repertoire of research methods to be employed in his or her semester of independent research on urban growth, municipal building, attendant socio-cultural transformations, and civic power politics in any region or period of history, European, World, or American.

Second, the class is designed to facilitate each student's selection of an individual research topic, creation of a feasible research design, access to primary documents (in manuscript or printed form), and completion of a major paper (30 pages minimum) based on primary historical sources relevant to the main class themes. Concerted student efforts to accomplish these goals will build on and enhance student mastery of the fundamental principles of undergraduate education at IUPUI, especially Core Communication Skills, Critical Thinking, Integration and Application of Knowledge, Intellectual Depth and Breadth, Understanding Society and Culture (particularly in historical and cross-cultural dimensions), and High Ethical Behavior (cities over time being the seats of justice, arenas for contending civic values, generators of etiquette, and the locus of police both public and private.)

Although course readings will focus on the sites, infrastructures, and human adaptations to cities in Europe, methods of inquiry displayed in class texts can easily be applied to any past urban community and students are free to select any city or civic group in the United States or abroad for the focus of their own independent research. Students who possess adequate reading knowledge of a foreign language should make a special effort to seek out research topics in the physical region of their linguistic specialization. This freedom of choice will allow all senior students to engage in original research regardless of their prior field(s) or areas of specialization and foreign language study. In order to achieve sustained access to original historical sources (an essential component of student work this semester), all class participants should be fully prepared to make use of the main library collections in Bloomington (especially the Lilly rare book collection), and should immediately familiarize themselves with all aspects of the Illiad Inter-Library Loan system through IUPUI's University Library. ILL will no doubt be a vital source of printed primary materials for many student researchers. Students may wish to investigate at once the original historical sources available locally that document the urban architectural, socio-cultural, and socio-political histories of Indiana and mid-western cities. Key sites here may be the Indiana Historical Society, the Indiana State Archives and State History Library, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, especially its print collection, and various other local and regional museums. Monolingual students should note that vast quantities of printed primary documents and historical serial publications are available on the history of most towns in Britain, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. State historical societies in the U.S. also specialize in the production and conservation of ample original and printed primary sources pertaining to the history of cities within them. Historic newspapers and serial publications like monthly magazines, usually based in cities, are also excellent potential primary sources.

Required Course Readings: Listed below (in order of use) are the six required readings for this capstone history course. Books may be purchased at the IUPUI campus bookstore and easily through online book dealers. Buy only the exact editions of the texts as listed below. Students intending to purchase texts at IUPUI should obtain all texts at once since the bookstore here rapidly ships all unsold copies back to the publishers early in each semester.

Required Course Readings.

Vance, James, E. The Continuing City. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1990.

Sennett, Richard. Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization. Norton, 1996.

Hanawalt, B.A. and K.L. Reyerson, eds., City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe. Univ. of

Minnesota Press, 1994.

Davis, Robert C. The War of the Fists: Popular Culture and Public Violence in Late Renaissance

Venice. Oxford Univ. Press, 1994.

Ballon, Hillary. The Paris of Henry IV: Architecture and Urbanism. MIT Press/Architectural

History Foundation, 1991.

Buchan, James. Crowded with Genius. The Scottish Enlightenment: Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind.

Harper Collins, 2003.

Course Requirements: 1) Regular attendance at all class sessions (absences must be excused and may lower your final grade). Class rosters for student signature will be circulated at all class sessions and reviewed daily by the instructor. Make certain that your name in on them at every session you attend. Students who cannot assure consistent attendance at all class meetings should save us all discontent and drop this class at once; 2) completion of all assigned readings by the dates on which they are listed below on the Course Outline and Assignments; 3) preparation and presentation of an oral reading or chapter(s) analysis to the class; 4) informed participation in all class discussion; 5) completion exactly on time of a written research design on a topic expressly approved by the instructor outlining the sources and methods to be employed in original, independent research during the semester; 6) completion of at least three (3) draft outlines of the entire research paper due at various points in the semester; 7) individual paper conference(s) with the instructor to go over rough drafts of outlines and final research paper; and 8) completion of a major research paper (30 pages minimum not counting notes and bibliography) based on primary historical sources. All written course work submitted late is subject to severe grade penalties at the discretion of the instructor. Deadlines are deadlines, learn to meet them for all assignments all of the time.

Course Grading:

Class Participation, 10% of final grade, Oral Reading/Chapter Analysis 10% of final mark, research design 15% of final mark, Outlines 10% of final grade, research paper 55% of final mark.

COURSE OUTLINE AND READING ASSIGNMENTS

(All Readings to Be Completed by the Date They Are Listed.)

Th. 8/26 Course Introduction. Distribution and Explanation of Syllabus. Assignment

of Oral Text/Chapter Analyses. Brief Introductory Lecture:

Urban Spatial, Structural, Social, Political, and Cultural History: Opportunities, Themes, Challenges and Problems.

Tu. 8/31 Lecture/Discussion: Urban Morphology in Western Civilization. Methods and

Problems of Historical Analysis. Classical and Early Medieval Cities.

Readings: Vance, The Continuing City, Preface and Chapts. 1-3, pp. xiii-109.

All Students to Provide Instructor with Written Tentative Research Topic and Rough Typed Outline (1 Page) of Research Paper. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Th. 9/2 Lecture/Discussion: "Liberalism" in Urban Context: Urban Form, Politics,

and Human Potential.

Readings: Vance, Continuing City, Chapt. 4, pp. 111-171.

Approved Student Research Topics Returned.

Tu. 9/7 Lecture/Discussion: Late Medieval Urbanism and the Contest of Royal

and Mercantile Capitals in European Socio-Economic and Socio-

Political History.

Readings: Vance, Continuing City, Chapts 5-6, pp. 173-281..

Th. 9/9 Lecture/Discussion: The City and the Body: Human Psycho-Social Responses

to the Urban Built Environment. The Greek Exemplum.

Readings: Sennett, Flesh and Stone, Introduction and Chapt. 1, pp. 15-67.

Tu. 9/14 Lecture/Discussion: Urban Religions and Rituals in Spatial Context. Power,

Politics, and Salvation in Civic Communities.

Readings: Sennett, Flesh and Stone, Chapts. 2-4, pp. 68-148

Th. 9/16 Lecture/Discussion: Bodies Politic and the Politics of the Body: Communal

Relations in Medieval Cities.

Readings: Sennett, Flesh and Stone, Chapts. 5-6, pp. 151-211.

Tu. 9/21 Lecture/Discussion: Science, Medicine, and Cities in Conjunction: Systems of

Human Circulation and Social Mobility in the City.

Readings: Sennett, Flesh and Stone, Chapt. 8, pp. 255-281.

Research Project Design Due In Class From All Students. No Exceptions.

Th. 9/23 Lecture/Discussion: Spectacular Cities: Ceremonies of Power, Place, and

Protest in Medieval Urban Communities.

Readings: Hanawalt and Reyerson, City and Spectacle, Introduction and Part I/1,

Bryant, "Configurations of Community," pp. ix-33.

Tu. 9/28 Lecture/Discussion: Modes and Methods for the Study of Religious Expression

in Historical Urban Context.

Readings: Hanawalt and Reyerson, City and Spectacle, Part II/4-6, Kempers,

Murray, and Flynn articles, pp. 89-168.

Th. 9/30 Lecture/Discussion: Urban Ceremonies in the Assertion of Communal

Solidarities and Power.

Readings: Hanawalt and Reyerson, City and Spectacle, Part III/7-8, Lindenbaum

and McRee articles, pp. 171-207.

Revised Second Research Paper Outline Due in Class. No Exceptions.

Tu. 10/5 Lecture/Discussion: The City Inside and Against the Theatre State: Urban

Festivities and Power Politics.

Readings: Hanawalt and Reyerson, City and Spectacle, Part IV/10-11, Nijsten

and Nichols articles, pp. 235-295.

Th. 10/7 Lecture/Discussion: Urban Rites of Violence: Binding Civic Traditions and

Breaking Human Bodies.

Readings: Davis, War of the Fists, Introduction and Chapter 1, pp. 3-46.

Tu. 10/12 Lecture/Discussion: Methods for Dealing with Urban Mayhem. Gender, Honor,

Neighborhood, and Social Solidarities in the Renaissance City.

Readings: Davis, War of the Fists, Chapts. 2-4 and Epilogue, pp. 47-171.

Th. 10/14 Lecture/Discussion: Architecture and Urbanism: Meanings and Intersections

in Historical Research.

Readings: Ballon, Paris of Henry IV, Introduction, pp. 1-13.

Tu. 10/19 RESEARCH WEEK. NO CLASS

Th. 10/21 RESEARCH WEEK. NO CLASS

Tu. 10/26 Lecture/Discussion: How Do French Kings Go to Town? Royal Politics and

Planning in the Transformation of Parisian Civic Space.

Readings: Ballon, Paris of Henry IV, Chapts. 1-3, pp, 15-165.

Th. 10/28 Lecture/Discussion: Kings as Fountains of Mercy: Channeling Charity

in the Subject City. Urban Histories of Medicine and Police.

Readings: Ballon, Paris of Henry IV, Chapt. 4, pp. 166-198

Third and Final Outline for Research Paper Due in Class. No

Exceptions. All Students Schedule Paper Conferences With Instructor.

Tu. 11/2 Lecture/Discussion: Rebuilding and Revising the City: The Media of

Of Urban Morphology and Reconceptualizations of Civic Space.

Readings: Ballon, Paris of Henry IV, Chapt. 6 and Conclusion, pp. 212-255.

Th. 11/4 Lecture/Discussion: Intellectual Movements as Urban Phenomena. How

to Do the Intellectual History of Cities. Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh as

a Test Case.

Readings: Buchan, Crowded With Genius, Prologue and Chapt. 1, pp. 1-23.

Tu. 11/9 Lecture/Discussion: Cities in Rebellion, Cities in Religious Conflict. Toleration

in Civic and in Civil Society.

Readings: Buchan, Crowded With Genius, Chapts. 2-4, pp. 24-118.

Th. 11/11 Lecture/Discussion: Cities as Incubators of Genius: Edinburgh and Adam

Smith.

Readings: Buchan, Crowded With Genius, Chapt. 5, pp. 119-140.

Tu. 11/16 Lecture/Discussion: Cities as Realms of Literary Invention and Speculation

both Practical and Impractical.

Readings, Buchan, Crowded With Genius, Chapts, 6-7, pp. 141-207

Th. 11/18 Lecture/Discussion: The Meanings of "Civil Society" in Urban Context

and Methods for the Study of Civility Among Citizens.

Readings, Buchan, Crowded With Genius, Chapt. 8, pp. 208-240.

Tu. 11/23 RESEARCH/WRITING WEEK. NO CLASS

Submit Draft Paper Sections to Instructor For Critique/Improvement.

Th. 11/25 THANKSGIVING! NO CLASS

Tu. 11/30 Final Lecture/Discussion: Writing Popular Histories of Transformations

in the Lives and Minds of Historic Urbanites. Form, Content, and Expression

in Buchan's History of Edinburgh.

Readings: Buchan, Crowded With Genius, Chapts.9-11 and Epilogue, pp. 241-

340.

Th. 12/2 RESEARCH/WRITING WEEK. NO CLASS.

Tu. 12/7 RESEARCH/WRITING WEEK. NO CLASS.

Th. 12/9 RESEARCH/WRITING WEEK. NO CLASS.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, FINAL RESEARCH PAPERS DUE TO INSTRUCTOR'S MAILBOX (CA 504M) BY NOON. HARDCOPY ONLY! LATE PAPERS FAIL.