History 753

Spring 2005

 

Comparative History Seminar

The U.S. and German Political Economies Since the 1870s
Professor Colleen Dunlavy

http://history.wisc.edu/dunlavy
5109 Humanities, UW-Madison

Office Hours
tel. (608) 263-1854

W 1:00-3:00 p.m.

Semester Schedule

 

January 20

Introductions

Part I.  Conceptual and Methodological Tools

January 27

Paradigms of political economy

  • "Robert Heilbroner, Writer and Economist, Dies at 85," New York Times, January 12, 2005, A21.

  • Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philsophers:  The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers, rev. 7th ed. (New York:  Simon and Schuster, 1999). [at UBS & College Lib Reserves]

  • Peter A. Hall and David Soskice, "An Introduction to Varieties of Capitalism," in idem, eds., Varieties of Capitalism:  The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2001), 1-68. [E-Reserves]

  • Colleen A. Dunlavy, "Bursting Through State Limits:  Lessons from American Railroad History," in Lars Magnusson and Jan Ottosson, eds., The State, Regulation and the Economy:  An Historical Perspective (Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, MA:  Edward Elgar, 2001), 44-59. [E-Reserves]

February 3

Comparative methodology

  • Natalie Zemon Davis, "A Modern Hero [review of Carole Fink, Marc Bloch:  A Life in History]," New York Review of Books, April 26, 1990, 27-30.  [E-Reserves]
  • Marc Bloch, "Toward a Comparative History of European Societies," in Frederick C. Lane and Jelle C. Riermersma, eds., Enterprise and Secular Change: Readings in Economic History (Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1953), pp. 494-521.  This essay was first published in 1928. [E-Reserves]
  • William H. Sewell, "Marc Bloch and the Logic of Comparative History," History and Theory 6 (1967): 208-218.  [on JSTOR]
  • Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers, "The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry," Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (April 1980): 174-197.  [on JSTOR]
  • James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, "Comparative Historical Analysis:  Achievements and Agendas," in idem, eds.,Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences (. . . 2003), 3-38.  [E-Reserves]
  • Ira Katznelson, "Periodization and Preferences:  Reflections on Purposive Action in Comparative Historical Social Science," in ibid., 270-301.  [E-Reserves]

 
February 10 Comparative history in historiographic context

Other kinds of "new histories" [approx. 90 pp.]

  • Regional History
    • Selections from "AHR Forum:  Bringing Regionalism Back to History," American Historical Review 104 (October 1999): [JSTOR links]
      • Introduction, 1156.
      • Celia Applegate, "A Europe of Regions:  Reflections on the Historiography of Sub-National Places in Modern Times," 1157-1182.
      • Kären Wigen, "Culture, Power, and Place:  The New Landscapes of East Asian Regionalism," 1183-1201.
    • Susan H. Armitage, "From the Inside Out:  Rewriting Regional History," Frontiers 22 (2001): 32-47. [ProQuest]
  • Global History - World History
  • Internationalized History
    • Thomas Bender, "La Pietra Report:  A Report to the Profession," final report on the Organization of American Historians-New York University Project on Internationalizing American History, 1997-2000 (2000).  Read sec. I and browse the rest.
Exceptionalisms [organized chronologically; 141 pp. ]

 

Part II.  Actually Existing (or Close to) Comparative Studies
Writing assignment:  Chose one of the works in this section and write a methodologically astute, brief book review (max. 750 words) for

the journal Comparative Studies in Society and History.  This is due in the seminar in which we are scheduled to discuss the work(s).
   

February 17

  • Alfred Chandler, Scale and Scope:  The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, Mass.:  Harvard University Press/Belknap Press, 1990), introduction, parts II and IV, conclusion.

February 24

  • Nancy Mitchell, The Danger of Dreams:  German and American Imperialism in Latin America (Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

March 3

  • Mary Nolan, Visions of Modernity:  American Business and the Modernization of Germany (New York and Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1994).  College Lib reserves and ACLS E-Books
March 10

  • Strasser, Susan, Charles McGovern, and Matthias Judt, eds. Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century.  Washington, D.C.:  German Historical Institute; Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
March 17 no seminar

March 31

  • Kenneth Barkin, "A Case Study in Comparative History: Populism in Germany and America," in Herbert J. Bass, ed., The State of American History (Chicago, 1970), 373-404. [on E-Reserves]

  • David Peal, "The Politics of Populism: Germany and the American South in the 1890s," Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (April 1989): 340-62.

  • John A. Garraty, "The New Deal, National Socialism, and the Great Depression," American Historical Review 78 (Oct. 1973): 907-944.

  • Jeremy Varon, Bringing the War Back Home:  The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 2004), 1-19 (introduction). [on E-Reserves; also, the book is in College Library Reserves]

 

Part III.  Comparative History - Make It So!
Writing assignment:  write a research proposal (ca. 20 pp.) for a U.S.-German comparative study that focuses on a topic/period of interest to you (to be selected in consultation with Prof. Dunlavy).  Due May 10.

In this portion of the semester, selected topics (listed below) have been chosen to correspond roughly with the students' intended paper topics.  The students will work collaboratively with Prof. D. to develop both required readings for each topic and a fuller, collective bibliography (online).
   

April 7

Reading topic:  federalism

  • Harry N. Scheiber, "Redesigning the Architecture of Federalism--An American Tradition:  Modern Devolution Policies in Perspective," Yale Law & Policy Review 14(1996):  227-296.  On E-Reserves and Lexis-Nexis.

  • Maiken Umbach, "Introduction:  German Federalism in Historical Perspective," in German Federalism, ed. idem (Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York:  Palgrave, 2002), 1-14.  [E-Reserves]

  • Carsten Hefeker, "The Agony of Central Power:  Fiscal Federalism in the German Reich," European Review of Economic History, 5 (April 2001): 119-142.

  • Jeremy Noakes, "Federalism in the Nazi State," in German Federalism, ed. Maiken Umbach (Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York:  Palgrave, 2002), 113-145.  [E-Reserves]

  • John E. Finn, "Federalism in Perpetuity:  West German and United States Federalism in Comparative Perspective," New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 22 (1989-1990): 1-35.

 

April 14

 Reading topic:  business regulation/promotion
  • Review the first week's selection from Varieties of Capitalism.
  • Morton Keller, "Public Policy and Large Enterprise:  Comparative Historical Perspectives," in Norbert Horn and Jürgen Kocka, eds., Recht und Entwicklung der Großunternehmen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert . . . (Göttingen:  Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979), 515-534.
  • Charles W. Calomiris, "Corporate-Finance Benefits from Universal Banking:  Germany and the United States, 1870-1914," National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Working Papers 4408, 1993.  (Click the link, enter your UW email address, and you will receive an email with a download link.)

April 21

 No seminar meeting

April 28

 Reading topic:  welfare states

April 28

 Reading topic:  environmental history
  • Raymond Dominick, "The Roots of the Green Movement in the United States and West Germany," Environmental Review 12 (1988): 1-30.  [E-Reserves]
  • Christian Joppke, "Explaining Cross-National Variations of Two Anti-Nuclear Movements:  A Political Process Perspective," Sociology 26 (1992): 311-331.  [E-Reserves]

Coming full circle -- comparative vs. other kinds of non-national histories

May 5

Wrap-up discussion; final papers due May 11