History BC 3442y Lisa Tiersten

Spring 1998 Lehman 422A/4-4733

Monday 6:10-8:00 pm ltiersten@barnard.columbia.edu

Lehman 416A Office Hours: Wed 3-4, 6-8

THE POLITICS OF LEISURE IN MODERN EUROPE

This course will explore the development of a new urban culture of leisure in modern Europe. From the late eighteenth century on, the disruptions of urban industrial development radically restructured the forms and practices of leisure as much as those of the work world. For emerging middle-class elites, the elaboration of new leisure rituals was an odyssey of self-definition and an exercise in the assertion of cultural power; at the same time, the process involved the confrontation and, often, the challenging of popular, traditional ideas and practices of leisure.

A 12-15 page research paper (40% of final grade), due May 7. Students will hand in a brief prospectus or an annotated outline, and a bibliography for the paper on March 9.

Introduction of one week’s readings, with one other classmate (20% of final grade).

Two written comments on the week’s reading, to be posted on the class newsgroup (15% of grade).

Informed class participation. (25% of final grade).

 

COURSE MATERIALS

All assigned readings are on reserve at the Barnard Library. A reader is available for purchase at Village Copier on 115th Street, between Broadway and Riverside. The following books may be purchased at Papyrus Books on Broadway and 114th Street:

Florence Nightingale, Cassandra.

John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Society.

AND THE ATTACK ON POPULAR CULTURE

2. February 2: Popular Culture and Communal Leisure in Pre-Industrial Society

Assignment:

Keith Thomas, "Work and Leisure in Pre-Industrial Society." Past and Present, no. 29. Dec. 1964.

Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, ch. 7, "The World of Carnival," pp. 182-204, ch. 8, "The Triumph of Lent," and ch. 9, Popular Culture and Social Change," pp. 244-259; 270-281.

3. February 9: From Rural Rhythms to Urban Clock-Time

Assignment:

E.P. Thompson, "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism," Past and Present, no. 38, (Dec. 1967): 56-97.

Douglas Reid, "The Decline of Saint Monday, 1766-1876," Past and Present (71): 1976.

Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, ch. 3, "Public Leisure and Private Leisure."

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, ch. 2, "Treats of Oliver Twist’s growth, education, and board," and ch. 3, "Relates how Oliver Twist was very near getting a place which would not have been a sinecure."

4. February 16: Time is Money: Bourgeois Culture, the Disappearance of Idleness and the Invention of Leisure

Assignment:

Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, ch. 3, "Conspicuous Leisure," pp. 41-53, 57-59 (Penguin Books).

Chris Rojek, "Leisure and ‘The Ruins of the Bourgeois World,’" ch. 5 in Leisure for Leisure, ed. Chris Rojek.

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, ch. 2, "The Spirit of Capitalism."

Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, ch. VIII, "Business Qualities," pp. 255-263 only.

PAPER TOPIC DUE

5. February 23: Separate Spheres: Gender and Leisure Rituals

Assignment:

Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes, ch. 8, "‘My Own Fireside’: The Creation of the Middle-Class Home," ch. 9, "‘Lofty Pine and Slender Vine’: Living with Gender in the Middle Class," and ch. 10, "‘Improving Times’: Men, Women and the Public Sphere."

Florence Nightingale, Cassandra.

Slides: gendered leisure rituals

6. March 2: Bohemia and Anti-Work

Assignment:

Jerrold Seigel, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830-1930, Part I, "Bohemians and Bourgeois" and Part II, "Public Worlds and Inner Lives."

Charles Baudelaire, "Spleen," and "The Taste of Nothingness" in The Flowers of Evil and Paris Spleen, pp. 139-143.

Gustave Flaubert, The Sentimental Education, selection.

7. March 9: Cafés, Pubs, and Drinking

Assignment:

W. Scott Haine, The World of the Paris Café: Socialibility among the French Working Class, 1789-1914, ch. 2, "Privacy in Public," ch. 3, "Work and the Café: Strategies of Sociability," and ch. 4, "The Social Construction of the Drinking Experience."

Joseph Gusfield, "Benevolent Repression: Popular Culture, Social Structure, and the Control of Drinking,"ch. 18 in Drinking: Behavior and Belief in Modern History, eds., Susanna Barrows and Robin Room, 399-424.

Emile Zola, L’Assommoir, selection.

PAPER BIBLIOGRAPHY AND PROSPECTUS OR OUTLINE DUE.

9. March 23: Shopping

Assignment:

Michael Miller, The Bon Marché: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, ch. 1, "New Stores," and ch. 5, "Selling Consumption."

Erika Rappaport, "‘A New Era of Shopping’: The Promotion of Women’s Pleasure in London’s West End, 1909-1914," in Leo Charney and Vanessa Schwartz, eds., Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life.

Emile Zola, The Ladies Paradise, chs. 4 and 9.

Slides: department stores and shops

10. March 30: The Rise of Commercial Amusements: The Case of the Music Hall

Assignment:

Gareth Stedman-Jones, "Working-Class Culture and Working-Class Politics in London, 1870-1900: Notes on the Remaking of a Working Class." Journal of Social History, vol. vii. Summer 1974.

T.J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life, ch. 4, "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère."

Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami, ch. 1, pp. 1-18.

11. April 6: Sports

Assignment:

Richard Holt, Sport and Society in Modern France, ch. 7, "The Tradition of Violence: Brutality, Hooliganism and Combativity."

Richard Holt, Sport and the British: A Modern History, ch. 2, "Amateurism and the Victorians," and ch. 3, "Living in the City: Working-Class Communities."

Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays, ch. 5, "Rugby and Football."

12. April 13: Taylorism and the Cult of Efficiency in the Early 20th Century

Assignment:

Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor, ch. 8, "The Science of Work and the Social Question."

Robert Frost, "Machine Liberation: Invention Housewives and Home Appliances in Interwar France," French Historical Studies, vol. 18, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 109-130.

Adrian Forty, Objects of Desire, ch. 9, "Labour-Saving in the Home."

Gary Cross, A Quest for Time: The Reduction of Work in Britain and France, 1840-1940, ch. 8, "Meanings of Free Time: Leisure and Class in the 1920s."

Frederick Taylor, Principles of Scientific Management, pp. 77-86.

13. April 20: Cinema and the Americanization of Europe

Assignment:

Jackie Stacey, Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship,

ch. 4, "Hollywood Cinema: The Great Escape," and ch. 6, "With Stars in Their Eyes," pp. 190-223.

Erica Carter, "Deviant Pleasures? Women, Melodrama, and Consumer Nationalism in West Germany," in Victoria de Grazia, ed., The Sex of Things.

Rob Kroes, "Introduction: American and Europe--A Clash of Imagined Communities," in John Dean and Jean-Paul Gabilliet, eds., European Readings of American Popular Culture

Cinema Paradiso

14. April 27: Tourism

Assignment:

Ellen Furlough, "Packaging Pleasures: Club Méditerranée and French Consumer Culture, 1950-1968," French Historical Studies vol. 18, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 65-81.

John Urry, The Tourist Gaze, chs. 1-3, ch. 5, ch. 7.

*****Trainspotting, Thursday, April 30, 7-9 pm, 202 Barnard Hall*****

15. May 4: Subcultures: boredom, drugs, and deviance in the postmodern era

Assignment:

Nicholas Dorn and Nigel South, "Drugs and Leisure, Prohibition and Pleasure: From Subculture to the Drugalogue," in Chris Rojek, ed. Leisure for Leisure.

Jock Young, "The Subterranean World of Play," in Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton, eds., The Subcultures Reader.

Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds., Resistance Through Rituals:

Youth Subcultures in post-war Britain, Clarke, "The Skinheads and the Magical Recovery of Community," Corrigan, "Doing Nothing," Hebdige, "Reggae, Rastas and Rudies," Clarke, "Style," McRobbie and Garber, "Girls and Subcultures," and Corrigan and Frith, "The Politics of Youth Culture."

Trainspotting

PAPER DUE IN MY BOX IN THE HISTORY OFFICE BY 5 PM, FRIDAY, MAY 7th