History 490A  HISTORY AND SOCIAL THEORY     (Jacobsen)

            This course will discuss selected texts in classic and contemporary social and cultural theory that are crucial for situating the historian's work in ongoing debates about societies, cultures, polities and economies.  Will include readings of classic "modern" theorists of social structure and process (Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel), twentieth century approaches to culture, politics and society (Gramsci, Habermas, structuralism, Geertz, neo-institutional economics) and recent theories of social construction and fragmentation (postmodernism; Foucault; post-colonialism; theories of gender, etnicity and race, and transnationality/globalization).  Class participation and two 15-18 page papers are required: one an intellectual biography of one of the authors we discuss in class, the other a historiographical essay on a discrete issue bringing to bear at least two of the theoretical approaches discussed in class.