Course identifier: BBN-ERA-186

Level: MA

Title of course: Microhistory

Teacher: István Szijártó

Time and venue: Tuesday 14.00-15.30, Múzeum krt. 6-8. 268.

Language: English

Description: The course is intended as an English-language introduction to microhistory - first of all for Erasmus studenst, but also for everyone interested. The classes address the assets and weaknesses of microhistory through a close reading of its classical texts and latest examples from Italian microhistory to Anglo-Saxon microhistory.

Programme:

1. 10 September: Introduction into microhistory, fixing a detailed reading list for the semester

2. 17 September: Carlo Ginzburg: The Cheese and the Worms. The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.

3. 24 September: Giovanni Levi: Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

4. 1 October: Natalie Zemon Davis: The Return of Martin Guerre. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.

5. 8 October: J. C. Holt: Robin Hood. London: Thames and Hudson, 1989.

6. 15 October: Guido Ruggiero: Machiavelli in Love. Sex, Self, and Society in the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. 71-84., 108-162.

7. 22 October: Richard L. Kagan: Lucrecia’s Dreams. Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press, 1990.

8. 12 November: James Shapiro: 1599. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare. London: Faber and Faber, 2005. xv-xxiv., 1-211.

10. 19 November: James Shapiro: 1599. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare. London: Faber and Faber, 2005. 212-373.

11. 26 November: Peter Englund: The Battle that Shook Europe. Poltava and the Birth of the Russian Empire. London – New York: I. B. Tauris, 1992.

12. 10 December: Sarah Maza: Private Lives and Public Affairs. The Causes Célebres of Prerevolutionary France. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press, 1993. 1-67., 263-312.