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Academic Year 2004/2005

Knowledge, Power and the State
HIST 284 SP

The university is one of the oldest existing institutions, predating both the modern state and the industrial economy. Its impact on modern society has been profound, yet its history remains obscure. This lecture/discussion course comparatively analyzes the development of the university between roughly1800 and 1950 with special emphasis on the historical links between the university and the power of the state and the development of the economy in Western Europe and North America. We will begin by briefly tracing the university¿s medieval European origins and then compare its development in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will focus on the important links between European and American universities and on the transformation of the university from an institution charged with educating ecclesiastical, professional and administrative elites to one increasingly devoted to the systematic production of specialized knowledge and training women and men in distinct academic disciplines. In this context, we will analyze the processes that secularized, democratized and professionalized higher education, paying special attention to the resulting tensions: the university as both an elite institution and agent of social mobility; its charge to advance specialized knowledge, yet also to teach broadly educated, responsible citizens; and not least, the university¿s commitment to academic freedom, on the one hand, and the demands of the state and firms for instrumental knowledge, on the other. Related problems explored in this course will include the university and politics, its role in and response to war and economic depression, the impact of authoritarianism, political repression, and immigration, and finally, the role of the university in the creation of the national security state in the early years of the Cold War.

MAJOR READINGS

Michael J. Hofstetter, THE ROMANTIC IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY: ENGLAND AND GERMANY, 1770-1850 (Houndmills, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave, 2001).
Konrad H. Jarausch, ed., THE TRANSFORMATION OF HIGHER LEARNING, 1860-1930 (Stuttgart and Chicago: Klett-Cotta, 1983).
Charles E. McClelland, STATE, SOCIETY, AND UNIVERSITY IN GERMANY, 1700-1914 Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
Fritz K. Ringer, EDUCATION AND SOCIETY IN MODERN EUROPE (Bloomington and London: Indiana Unive rsity Press, 1979).
Willis Rudy, TOTAL WAR AND TWENTIETH-CENTURY HIGHER LEARNING: UNIVERSITIES OF THE WESTERN WORLD IN THE FIRST AND SECOND WORLD WARS (London and Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1991).
Reba N. Soffer, DISCIPLINE AND P OWER: THE UNIVERSITY, HISTORY, AND THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISH ELITE, 1870-1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994).
Fritz Stern, EINSTEIN¿S GERMAN WORLD (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1999).
Walter Rüegg, ed., A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY IN EUROPE: VOLUME 3, UNIVERSITIES IN THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES (1800-1945) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Max Weber, "Science as a Vocation," in FROM MAX WEBER: ESSAYS IN SOCIOLOGY, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul Ltd., 1948), 129-56.
George Weisz, THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN UNIVERSITIES IN FRANCE, 1863-1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Midterm, Final, two 5-7 pp. papers.

COURSE FORMAT: Lecture/Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS HIST    Grading Mode: Graded   

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-21-2005

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