Readings
The following are the readings for the semester. They will be available online, either directly (as a .pdf) or as a link (often via JSTOR.org)
*Note that some more readings will be added and that every week – or almost every week – will have at least some readings, though the reading load as a whole will be reasonable.
Main textbook:
McPhee, Peter. Liberty or Death : the French Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.
Dwyer, Philip G. Citizen Emperor : Napoleon in Power. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013.
Schedule each week
(* “McPhee, Ch 1” means the first chapter of this book: McPhee, Peter. Liberty or Death : the French Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. )
Topic:
France and its empire in the 1780s
Primary material: –
Reading: –
Group Work: –
Topic:
The Enlightenment
Primary material:
https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/condorcet-outlines-of-an-historical-view-of-the-progress-of-the-human-mind – intro, epoch 9, epoch 10 if time
https://revolution.chnm.org/d/278
Reading:
McPhee Ch 2.
Robert Darnton, Readers Respond to Rousseau, from The Great Cat Massacre.
Group Work:
Group A
No class!
Topic:
The Year 1789
Primary material:
KMB: 184-99; 228-237; LMTR:51-54
Reading:
McPhee Ch 4.
Suzanne Desan, “Gender, Radicalization, and the October Days: Occupying the National Assembly,” French Historical Studies 43, no. 3 (August 2020): 360–61.
Group Work:
Group B
Topic:
Rights and Debates
Primary material:
LMTR:98-109
Reading:
McPhee Ch 5.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. “Citizens All? Citizens Some! The Making of the Citizen.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45, no. 4 (2003): 650–79. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3879492.
Group Work:
Group C
Topic:
From the Civil Constitution of the Clergy to the Flight to Varennes
Primary material:
KMB: 240-242, 270-278
Reading:
McPhee Ch 7.
Dale Lothrop Clifford, “The National Guard and the Parisian Community, 1789-1790,” French Historical Studies 16, no. 4 (Autumn 1990).
Group Work:
Group A
Topic:
1792: war and revolution
Primary material:
KMB: 287-290; 295-311
Reading:
McPhee Ch 8-9.
Rhys Jones, “Time Warps During the French Revolution,” Past & Present 254, no. 1 (February 2022): 109.
Group Work:
Group B
Topic:
The Vendee
Primary material:
KMB: 218-219
Reading:
McPhee Ch 10-11.
Hufton, “In Search of Counterrevolutionary Women” from Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution.
Group Work:
Group C
No class!
Topic:
The Haitian Revolution
Primary material:
Popkin, Facing Racial Revolution, 46-48, 235-244.
Reading:
Geggus, Haitian Revolution, Ch 1
Getachew, Adom. “Universalism After the Post-Colonial Turn: Interpreting the Haitian Revolution.” Political Theory 44, no. 6 (2016): 821–45. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26419440.
Group Work:
Group A
Topic:
The Terror
Primary material:
KMB: 331-337, 340-354, 369-384
Reading:
McPhee Ch 12-13.
Kafka, Ben. “The Demon of Writing: Paperwork, Public Safety, and the Reign of Terror.” Representations (Berkeley, Calif.) 98.1 (2007): 1–24. Web.
Group Work:
Group B
Topic:
Thermidor and Directory
Primary material:
LMTR: 263-275, 311-313, 323-327
Reading:
McPhee Ch 14-15.
Desan, Suzanne. “Redefining Revolutionary Liberty: The Rhetoric of Religious Revival during the French Revolution.” The Journal of Modern History 60, no. 1 (1988): 2–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1880404.
Group Work:
Group C
Topic:
Napoleon: domestic
Primary material:
LMTR: 334-347
Reading:
Dwyer, Citizen Emperor, Ch 1-2.
Martin, “Napoleonic Friendship in the Ranks,” from Napoleonic Friendship: Military Fraternity, Intimacy, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century France.
Group Work:
Group A
Topic:
Napoleon: conquest
Primary material:
https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/images/goethe-and-napoleon-i-meeting-in-erfurt-germany-in-the-governors-palace/
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/letters/1806-10-13.htm
Reading:
Dwyer, Citizen Emperor, Ch 9-11.
Tozzi, Christopher. “Jews, Soldiering, and Citizenship in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.” The Journal of Modern History 86, no. 2 (2014): 233–57. https://doi.org/10.1086/675484.
Group Work:
Group B
Topic:
Napoleon: retreat
Primary material:
LMTR: 348-351
Reading:
Dwyer, Citizen Emperor, Ch 19-20, 25.
Buck-Morss, Susan. “Hegel and Haiti.” Critical Inquiry 26, no. 4 (2000): 821–65. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344332. Buck-Morss, Susan. “Hegel and Haiti.” Critical Inquiry 26, no. 4 (2000): 821–65. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344332.
Group Work:
Group C
Other Readings
Keith M. Baker. University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization, Volume 7 The Old Regime and the French Revolution, University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Mason Laura and Tracey Rizzo. The French Revolution: A Document Collection. Houghton Mifflin 1999.
Darnton, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. [Rev. Ed.]. New York: Basic Books, 2009.
