Admission requirements
History students should have successfully completed their propaedeutic exam and both second-year BA-seminars, one of which in Algemene Geschiedenis. By choosing this seminar, students also choose Algemene Geschiedenis as their BA graduation specialisation.
Description
‘The Enlightenment’ is a phenomenon as contested as it is nebulous, as celebrated as it is vilified. Freeing themselves from self-incurred tutelage, Enlightened Europeans supposedly crystallised into a critical bourgeois public that ended the old regime. This narrative, tenacious in both scholarship and beyond, is correct in premising a congenital link between Enlightenment and revolution. Yet the question of the connection between political thought and political action, theory and practice, between expertise and execution, advice and authority, as well as intellectuals and the state, remains one of the greatest preoccupations amongst contemporary scholars of the period now—as it already was then amongst those for whom transformations in politics, culture, religion, and the economy became serious intellectual problems. Yet which changes precipitated the greatest philosophical agitation and animation across the continent? What was the nature of these controversies, and along which fault lines did the continent’s intellectuals find themselves most divided? How did ‘the social question’ arise in between periods of revolutionary upheaval? Where did slogan ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’ come from, and how did its propagation align with socio-political realities that continued to be patently unfree, unequal, and exclusive?
This course introduces students to the key political ideas, their authors, and their contexts in this transformative, intellectually cacophonous period in European history. It aims to give students a grounding in European history in the period 1648 to 1848 through the lens of intellectual problems and philosophical debate. A central premise of the course is the situating of ideas, texts, and authors conventionally associated with the Enlightenment in a longer continuum of conversations, preoccupations, and intellectual resources about the state, the government, and the people. Together we will read texts ranging from Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651) to Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Of the Social Contract (1762) to Friedrich Engels’ Condition of the Working Class in England (1845)—all treated here as elements within complex and contingent webs of polemics and politics, scholarship and social life. Students will have the opportunity to work on sources of similar genres, whilst acquiring a grasp of the main contours of the history of European political thought in the period as well as its still-contested legacies.
At the start of the course students will take an entry test, based on John Robertson, The Enlightenment: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2015). Details of the entry test will be made available via Brightspace in due course.
Course objectives
General learning objectives
The student can:
devise and conduct research of limited scope, including
a. identifying relevant literature and select and order them according to a defined principle;
b. organising and using relatively large amounts of information;
c. an analysis of a scholarly debate;
d. placing the research within the context of a scholarly debate.write a problem solving essay and give an oral presentation after the format defined in the first year Themacolleges, including:
a. using a realistic schedule of work;
b. formulating a research question and subquestions;
c. formulating a well-argued conclusion;
d. giving and receiving feedback;
e. responding to instructions of the lecturer.- reflect on the primary sources on which the literature is based;
- select and use primary sources for their own research;
- analyse sources, place and interpret them in a historical context;
- participate in class discussions.
Learning objectives, pertaining to the specialisation
- The student has knowledge of a specialisation, more specifically in the specialisation General History: of the place of European history from 1500 in a worldwide perspective; with a focus on the development and role of political institutions.
- Knowledge and insight in the main concepts, the research methods and techniques of the specialisation, more specifically in the specialisation General History: of the study of primary sources and the context specificity of nationally defined histories.
Learning objectives, pertaining to this specific seminar
The student will:
- acquire a grasp of the main contours of the history of European political thought in the period from roughly 1648 to 1848 as well as its historiography;
- gain exposure to and build confidence in engaging with complex philosophical texts, heightening their awareness of the hermeneutical challenges and possibilities of working with such genres of primary sources;
- learn how to examine philosophical arguments contextually, understanding the historical upshot of their intellectual interventions with sensitivity to their form, materiality, afterlives, and global contexts;
- learn how to confront the challenge of the lack of a written or archival record for some important, yet now relatively invisible, contributors to European intellectual life;
- be able to work with independently-sourced primary texts, canonical or not, situating their enquiries within the existing (dense) historiographical landscape.
Timetable
The timetables are available through MyTimetable.
Mode of instruction
- Seminar (compulsory attendance)
This means that students have to attend every session of the course. If you are not able to attend, you are required to notify the teacher beforehand. The teacher will determine if and how the missed session can be compensated by an additional assignment. If specific restrictions apply to a particular course, the teacher will notify the students at the beginning of the semester. If you do not comply with the aforementioned requirements, you will be excluded from the seminar.
Assessment method
Assessment
Written paper (6000-7000 words, based on problem-oriented research using primary sources, excluding front page, table of contents, footnotes and bibliography)
measured learning objectives: 2-5, 9-13Entry test
measured learning objectives: 9-11Presentation
measured learning objectives: 3-5, 9-11Participation
measured learning objectives: 6, 9-11Portfolio
measured learning objectives: 9-11, 13
Weighing
Paper: 60%
Entry test: 5%
Portfolio: 15%
Presentation: 10%
Participation: 10%
The final grade for the course is established by determining the weighted average with the additional requirement that the written paper must always be sufficient.
Resit
The written paper can be revised, when marked insufficient. Revision should be carried out within the deadline as provided in the relevant course outline on Brightspace.
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organised.
Reading list
John Robertson, The Enlightenment: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2015)
Please read the above book (it’s very short!) before the start of the course, for the purposes of the entry test, which counts for 5% of the final grade. Details of the entry test, as well as a reading list of weekly set texts, will be made available via Brightspace in due course.
Registration
Registration is done via a form that History students receive on the day registrations open.
If there is insufficient interest, seminars may be canceled and students will make an alternative choice in consultation with their study advisor.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Huizinga.
Remarks
none