Cours assuré par Mme Agnès Delahaye (Agnes.delahaye [at] univ-lyon2.fr)
This course aims to familiarize students of English and anglophones cultures with the themes, the periods, and the broad orientations of United-States history, and the practice of civilization as a French academic discipline.
After an introductory session on civilization (session 1), we will proceed in reverse chronological order from present-day political issues (sessions 2 -3), in order to explore the key texts, the main themes and the burning questions of recent US historiography as its moves away from the exceptionalist tradition of 20th-century histories (session 4). Since the 1990s, the history of slavery and race (sessions 5 & 6), gender history (session 7), the New History of the West (session 8) and settler colonialism (session 9) have contributed to de-centering the ideals contained in the founding documents and to opening up new avenues of research in social, political and cultural history.
Each session will consist in a short lecture presenting the key facts, figures, texts and notions of each period or field, followed by a closer analysis of the given primary sources and a general discussion based on the assigned secondary reading.
Sessions 7 & 8 will include an hour's work on the methodology of text analysis in civilisation.
Students must read the assigned resources before each class and come prepared to engage in class discussions about each theme or period.
Assessment will consist in a written "commentaire de texte" to hand in on paper at the start of the last session (session 9). A written "corrigé" will be sent to you before the end of term.
Please refer to the Portail des Etudes for more info: https://etudes.ens-lyon.fr/course/view.php?id=6148
