Fall 2013 Draft Syllabus HIST UA-286 THE EUROPEAN ENLIGHTENMENT John Shovlin History Department 53 Washington Square

e South, Rm. 422 e-mail: js3804@nyu.edu tel: (212) 998-8639 Office Hours: Thursday 2.003.30 or by appointment

The European Enlightenment has been described as a revolution of the mind, a fundamental moment of transformation in the way Europeans imagined the world and their place in it, and a foundational moment for the emergence of modern freedom. What was the nature of this intellectual and cultural revolution? Was it truly an emancipation, or did it invent new forms of oppression and slavery? What caused this transformation, and what was its relationship to the great revolutions of the age in America, France, and Haiti? This course introduces students to major themes in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European thought, and to significant scholarly debates on the character and significance of the Enlightenment in European history. Using a combination of primary and secondary readings, students will explore Enlightenment thinking on religion, science, economics, race, gender, the non-European world, international relations, government and political revolution. The course will touch upon a series of major problems in the interpretation of the Enlightenment, assessing the balance between religious and secularizing modes of thought; the role and significance of universalist discourse; the extent to which the Enlightenment can be regarded as a moment of human liberation, or its reverse; and the relationship between the Enlightenment and the Age of Revolution. Students will develop a deeper understanding of history by exploring aspects of a major tradition of historical research and interpretation. The class will be reading and writing-intensive, and culminates with a major research paper based on primary sources, exploring a theme related to the course. Books Available for Purchase: Dan Edelstein, The Enlightenment: A Genealogy (Chicago, 2010). Jonathan Israel, A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy (Princeton, 2010). Thomas Paine, Paine: Political Writings, ed. Bruce Kuklick (Cambridge, 2000) [1770s1790s]. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (Indianapolis, 1982) [1776]. Voltaire, Letters on England (Harmondsworth, 1980) [1734]. Course Guidelines The goal of the course is to develop students skills in argument and expression, their ability to think in a sophisticated way about history, and their capacity for historical research and strong academic writing. The final grade will be based on the following components: Participation (20%): Your principal responsibility for the first eleven weeks of the course is to complete the reading assignments on time and to come to class prepared to discuss them. You are expected to attend every class meeting and to participate actively in the discussion of the assigned readings. In

Fall 2013 Draft Syllabus working out the participation portion of the grade, both your attendance in class and the quality of your interventions (questions and comments) will be weighed. A student who attends regularly, but whose participation is minimal should not expect a participation grade above a B-. Presentations (20%): Students are required to make two class presentations (10 minutes each), focused on a particular reading assigned for the week in question, the first based on readings from weeks 15, the second on weeks 611. Short Writing Assignments (10%): Students will be asked periodically to do short, ungraded writing assignments, ranging in length from a paragraph to a few pages. These assignments are intended to improve students analytical writing skills, and to prepare them to succeed on the research paper component of the course. Research paper (50%): Students will be required to write a research paper (1520 pages) exploring a topic to be worked out between the student and the instructor. The paper must touch on a main theme of the course, but within these parameters the scope for individual choice of topic will be wide. Papers must be based on a combination of primary and secondary sources. A topic may be selected only if primary sources are available to adequately address that topic. Students are strongly encouraged to work with non-English language sources, where possible. Quality of writing, and skill in constructing arguments, in addition to quality of research and conceptualization, will count heavily in determining the final paper grade. Students will be required to submit a proposal identifying the principal question their paper will address along with the chief primary and secondary sources they plan to use. Students will be required to submit a complete draft of the paper (1215 pages) in addition to the final draft. This initial draft should be a finished and polished piece of writing, not a rough draft; it will be graded and will count toward half of the overall paper grade (or 25% of the course grade). Drafts will be peer reviewed and discussed in class over the last three weeks of the course. Paper drafts are due on the Sunday preceding the class in which they will be discussed. There can be no extensions for drafts, and late drafts will be penalized one letter grade per day. The final draft should constitute a complete and thorough revision of the first draft, and should be rewritten in light of the written comments students receive on the first draft. Typically, additional research in both primary and secondary sources will be necessary when revising a draft of a seminar paper. The grading standards for the final draft will be more exacting than the standards for the earlier draft. Thus a draft that has not been revised significantly will receive a lower grade if submitted as a final paper. Peer Paper Review: Over the last three weeks of the course, first drafts of student papers will be discussed in class. Active involvement in the peer review process will be an important basis for determining the participation grade. POLICY ON ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: If you are found to have plagiarized any part of a paper, proposal, or other written work submitted for the course you will be reported to the appropriate dean for disciplinary action, and you will receive a failing grade for the course. Schedule of Assigned Readings: Week 1 Wed 9/4 Introduction No assigned reading.

Fall 2013 Draft Syllabus Week 2 Wed 9/11 Defining Enlightenment Jonathan Israel, A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy (Princeton, 2010), preface and chapter 1. Dan Edelstein, The Enlightenment: A Genealogy (Chicago, 2010), selections.. Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1995), 1430. Robert Darnton, The High Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literature in Pre-Revolutionary France, Past and Present 51 (1971): 81115. Week 3 Wed 9/18 Enlightenment and Religion Israel, A Revolution of the Mind, chapter 4. John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration and Other Writings, ed. Mark Goldie (Indianapolis, 2010), ixxxiii, 767. http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2375 Voltaire, Letters on England, letters 17. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason: Part First, in Paine: Political Writings, ed. Bruce Kuklick (Cambridge, 2000), 267317. Week 4 Wed 9/25 Enlightenment and Science Thomas L. Hankins, Science and the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1985), 116, 15890. Voltaire, Letters on England, Letters 1117, 2324. Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 17601820 (Cambridge, 1992), 149. Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (New York, 1970), 345. Week 5 Wed 10/2 Enlightenment Economics Israel, A Revolution of the Mind, chapter 3. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (Indianapolis, 1982) [1776], selections. http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/200/217482

Fall 2013 Draft Syllabus Week 6 Wed 10/9 Enlightenment and Human Difference Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, The Persian Letters, Introduction and letters 2629, 3538, 118. http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1338 Denis Diderot, Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville. http://www.essex.ac.uk/cish/enlightenment/text/boug.html Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment Against Empire (Princeton, 2003), 1123, 3171. https://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/5291297 Louis Sala-Molins, The Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment, trans. John Conteh-Morgan (Minneapolis, 2006), 339. Week 7 Wed 10/16 Enlightenment and International Relations Israel, A Revolution of the Mind chapter 4. David Hume, Of the Balance of Power, in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (Indianapolis, 1987). http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/704/137538 Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations (Indianapolis, 2008) [1758], brief selections. http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2246 Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm Week 8 Wed 10/23 Enlightenment and Government Israel, A Revolution of the Mind, chapter 2. Voltaire, Letters on England, letters 810. Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria, An Essay on Crimes and Punishments [1764], Introduction and chapters 13, 68, 1217, 19, 21, 28. http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2193 John Shovlin Rethinking Enlightened Reform in a French Context, in Enlightened Reform in Southern Europe and its Atlantic Colonies c. 17501830, ed. Gabriel Paquette (Aldershot, 2009), 4762. https://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/5291311 T.C.W. Blanning, Frederick the Great and Enlightened Absolutism, in Enlightened Absolutism: Reform and Reformers in Later Eighteenth-Century Europe, ed. H.M. Scott (Ann Arbor, 1990), 26588.

Fall 2013 Draft Syllabus Week 9 Wed 10/30 Enlightenment and Revolution 1 Israel, A Revolution of the Mind chapter 7. Keith M. Baker, ed., The Old Regime and the French Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 15460, 23739, 36268, 38491. Paine, Political Writings, 59111, 14753. Darrin McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2001), 5688. https://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/5242902 Week 10 Wed 11/6 Enlightenment and Revolution 2 Roger Chartier, Do Books Make Revolutions? in Cultural Origins of the French Revolution (Durham, NC 1991), 6791. Keith M. Baker, ed., The Old Regime and the French Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 36884, 41627. David A. Bell, The First Total War (Boston, 2007), 84119. Tackett, A Revolution of the Mind? Becoming a Revolutionary: The Deputies of the French National Assembly and the Emergence of a Revolutionary Culture (1789-1790) (Princeton, 1996), 4876. Week 11 Class will not meet this week. Instead there will be mandatory individual conferences to discuss progress on paper drafts. Conferences will be scheduled during the class period but will take place in Prof. Shovlins office, KJCC 422. CLASS MEETINGS ON NOVEMBER 20, NOVEMBER 29, DECEMBER 4 WILL BE DEVOTED TO PEER DISCUSSION OF STUDENT DRAFT PAPERS. The papers of your fellow seminar students constitute your reading assignment in these weeks of the course. Papers must be submitted to instructor as an e-mail attachment on the Friday preceding class discussion. They will be posted on the Blackboard site. FINAL PAPERS DUE BY DECEMBER 14