Winter semester
Subject: Britain in Victorian era
Summary: During the so-called Victorian era (circa 1837-1901), Britain, the cradle of industrialization, the home of political and economic liberalism, and parliamentarism, a rising and then dominant colonial power, was the center of fundamental developments that exerted considerable influence within and beyond Europe.
The seminar will focus on aspects of the social, economic, political, cultural history of Victorian England. We will deal with the social stratification, the formation of the middle- and working classes, the development and character of urban centers (notably London), politics, political ideologies and the functioning of the parliamentary system, with political parties, and the development of political and social movements, with male and female role models and stereotypes, the political and economic role of the ruling classes, the positions, roles and itineraries of men and women, the ideal of the bourgeois family and the central position of children within it, poverty and charities, aspects of daily work, daily life, Victorian cultural norms and perceptions.
Selective bibliography
Chase, Karen, The spectacle of intimacy: a public life for the Victorian family, Πρίνστον, Princeton University Press, 2000.
Dixon, Thomas, The invention of altruism: making moral meanings in Victorian Britain, Οξφόρδη, Oxford University Press 2011.
Fraser, Derek, Urban politics in Victorian England: the structure of politics in Victorian cities, Λονδίνο, Macmillan Press 1979.
Hewitt, Martin, «Why the notion of Victorian Britain Does Make Sense», Victorian Studies, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Spring 2006), σ. 395-448.
Gunn, Simon, The public culture of the Victorian middle class: ritual and authority and the English industrial city, Μάντσεστερ, Νέα Υόρκη, Manchester University Press 2007.
Houghton, Walter, E., The Victorian Frame of mind, 1830-1870, Νιου Χέβεν και Λονδίνο, Yale UP c. 1985.
Kidd, Alan, Gender, civic culture and consumerism: middle class identity in Britain, 1800-1940, Μάντσεστερ, Νέα Υόρκη, Manchester University Press 1999.
Mangan, J.A., The games ethic and imperialism: aspects of the diffusion of an ideal, Λονδίνο, Πόρτλαντ, F. Cass περ. 1998.
Newsome, David, The Victorian world picture: perceptions and introspections in an age of change, Νιου Μπράνσγουικ, Rutgers UP 1997.
Steinbach, Susie, Understanding the Victorians. Politics, culture and society in nineteenth-century Britain, Λονδίνο, Νέα Υόρκη, Routledge 2017.
Thompson, F.M.L., The rise of respectable society: a social history of Victorian Britain, 1830-1900, Λονδίνο, Fontana Press 1988.
Young, George Malcolm, Victorian England: portrait of an age, Λονδίνο, Oxford UP 1936.
Winter semester
Subject: A Persecuting Society? Construction of Alterities in Medieval Europe
Summary: This seminar focuses on various (religious, ethnic, social etc.) groups that found themselves on the margins of European society during the High and Late Middle Ages on account of certain characteristics, real or alleged, that differentiated them from the majority of the population. This included, among others, the Jewish and Muslim communities, those considered as heretics, the lepers et al. The seminar will explore the factors that led to the foregrounding and the increasing categorisation of alterity during the period – as well as the methods of restriction, marginalisation and persecution that these groups faced. A central question is to what extent these observable tendencies led to the “formation of a persecuting society”, in the famous formulation of Robert Ian Moore. Among other aspects, the seminar will examine the strengthening of centralisation and the bureaucratic structures of both the Church and lay authorities, the role of intellectuals, the social and demographic transformations, the intellectual developments and the reform movements of the era.
Selected bibliography
P. Biller & A. Hudson (eds.), Heresy and Literacy, 1000-1530 (Cambridge University Press, 1994).
C. Bruschi & P. Biller (eds.), Texts and the Repression of Medieval Heresy (York Medieval Press, 2003).
M. Carr, N. Chrissis & G. Raccagni (eds.), Crusading against Christians in the Middle Ages (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).
R. Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
R. Chazan, The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom, 1000-1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
N. Cohn, Αγώνες για την έλευση της χιλιετούς βασιλείας του Θεού. Επαναστάτες, χιλιαστές και μυστικιστές αναρχικοί του Μεσαίωνα, μτφρ. Β. Τομανας (Αθήνα: Νησίδες, 2006).
J.K. Deane, A History of Medieval Heresy and Inquisition (Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011).
M. Frassetto (ed.), Heresy and the Persecuting Society in the Middle Ages: Essays on the Work of R.I. Moore (Brill, 2006).
J.B. Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society: Power, Discipline and Resistance in Languedoc (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).
Α.Γ. Κοφινάκης, Η αίρεση των Μπεγκίνων του Λανγκντόκ. Αιρετικός λόγος και ριζοσπαστικός φραγκισκανισμός. Χιλιαστικές και συνοδικές μορφές αντίστασης στην παπική εξουσία των αρχών του 14ου αιώνα (Ηρόδοτος, 2021).
M. Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 3rd ed. (Blackwell, 2002).
E. Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: village Occitan, 1294-1324 (Gallimard, 1978), ελλ. μτφρ.: Μονταγιού: ένα οξιτανικό χωριό από το 1294 έως το 1324, μτφρ. Ε. Καλπουρτζή – Ν. Κούρκουλος (Εκδόσεις του Εικοστού Πρώτου, 2008).
G. Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of Heterodoxy to Dissent c.1250-c.1450 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999).
R.I. Moore, The War on Heresy (Belknap Press, 2012).
R.I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society, 2nd ed. (Blackwell, 2006).
R.I. Moore, The Origins of European Dissent, rev. ed. (Blackwell, 1985).
D. Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton University Press, 1996).
G. Schwerhoff (Γ. Σβέρχοφ), Η Ιερά Εξέταση, μτφρ. Η. Τσιριγκάκης (Αθήνα: Εστία, 2010).
A. Sennis (ed.), Cathars in Question (York Medieval Press, 2016).
W.L. Wakefield and A.P. Evans (eds.), Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated (Columbia University Press, 1969).
Spring semester
Subject: The French Revolution. An Intellectual History
Summary: According to Enzo Traverso, the revolution is “a basic category of historical interpretation, which entails a specific interpretation of the present”. The seminar aims to highlight the particular dynamics of the French Revolution as a historical event, collective memory (local/national/global) and as a historiographical problem. Intellectual history is chosen as the privileged interpretive tool because it often transcends the taxonomic rigidities of political and social history, among other things, by paying attention to the particular dynamics engendered by the “emotional dimension” of the Revolution. Emphasis is given to the historiographical debate on the nature and legacy of the French Revolution, as it climaxed in 1989. The revisionist historiography of the ‘school’ of François Furet promoted its interpretive causal chain, linking the ‘revolutionary terror’ of the Jacobins to Soviet totalitarianism in the 20th century. Reaction to the revisionist thesis by numerous historians has been recently enhanced by comparative approaches to the multi-levelled revolutionary phenomenon in the 17th and 18th centuries, in England, the American colonies, France and the ‘sister republics’ engendered by the French Revolution. Basic conclusion from the critical overview of the debate, a dominant presentism which instrumentalizes the past in order to prevent similar ‘ominous’ developments in the present.
Selective bibliography
Michel Biard, Marisa Linton, Terror. The French Revolution and its Demons, Οξφόρδη, 2022.
François Furet, The French Revolution, Οξφόρδη, 1996.
Eric Hazan, A People’s History of the French Revolution Λονδίνο, 2017.
Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution, Oakland, 2004.
Jonathan Israel, Revolutionary Ideas. An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from the Rights of Man to Robespierre, New Jersey, 2014.
Annie Jourdan, Νέα Ιστορία της Γαλλικής Επανάστασης, Αθήνα, 2023.
Georges Lefebvre, Η Γαλλική Επανάσταση, Αθήνα, 2003.
Peter McPhee, Liberty or Death. The French Revolution, New Haven, 2016.
Arno J. Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions, New Jersey, 2000.
George Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution, Οξφόρδη, 1959.
Spring semester
Subject: Gender and Society in 19th and 20th century Europe: The case of middle and upper classes
Summary: The seminar deals with gender aspects of εuropean societies focusing on the middle, especially the upper middle, classes and the nobility. It examines mens’ and womens’ positions in family, social, political and economic life as well as the terms in which male superiority and female inferiority were being constructed and reproducted. Finally it examines the long process of womens’ emancipation which gradually changed male dominated societies in modern Europe.
Selected Bibliography
Αβδελά Έ., Ψαρρά Α. (επιμ.), Σιωπηρές ιστορίες: Γυναίκες και φύλο στην ιστορική αφήγηση, Αθήνα: Αλεξάνδρεια 1997
Βαρίκα Ε., Με διαφορετικό πρόσωπο: Φύλο, διαφορά και οικουμενικότητα. Αθήνα: Κατάρτι 2000
Βασιλειάδου Δ., Γ. Γιαννιτσιώτης, Α. Διαλέτη, Γ. Πλακωτός (επιμ.), Ανδρισμοί. Αναπαραστάσεις, υποκείμενα και πρακτικές από τη μεσαιωνική μέχρι τη σύγχρονη περίοδο, Gutenberg, Αθήνα 2019
Χάφτον, Ό., Ιστορία των γυναικών στην Ευρώπη (1500-1800), Αθήνα, Νεφέλη 2003
Anderson B., Zinsser J., A History of their Own. Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present, vol. II, Ν. Υόρκη, Harper Perennial 1989
Bock G., Women in European History, Οξφόρδη: Blackwell, 2002
Diemel C., Adelige Frauen im bürgerlichen Jahrhundert. Hofdamen, Stiftsdamen, Salondamen 1800-1870, Fischer TBV, Φρανκφούρτη 1998
Duby G., Perrot M. (επιμ.), A History of the Women in the West: τόμ. IV-V., Cambridge 1993-1994
Των ίδιων (επιμ.), Γυναίκες και ιστορία: Πρακτικά συμποσίου, Σορβόννη 13-14 Νοεμβρίου 1992, Αθήνα, Ελληνικά Γράμματα 1995
Frader L., Rose S. (επιμ.), Gender and Class in Modern Europe, Cornell UP, Ithaca/ Λονδίνο 1996
Frevert U. (επιμ.), Bürgerinnen und Bürger. Geschlechterverhältnisse im 19. Jahrhundert, Γκέτινγκεν 1988
Montgomery F., Collette C. (επιμ.), The European Womens History Reader, Λονδίνο, Routledge 2002.
Scott J., Feminism and History, Οξφόρδη, OUP 1996.