Make History of History 10a

This morning sees the return of a Harvard tradition which we would do better without: the fall term lecture course, History 10a: Introduction to Western Societies, Politics, and Cultures. Elsewhere known as “Western Civilization,” History 10a, still taken at Harvard by a few hundred students each year, is a remnant of the post-World War II liberal arts curriculum. It survived the Core Curriculum innovations of the 1970s and now cowers in a corner of the course catalogue, hoping to avoid the axe of the current curricular review.

Although a requirement for history concentrators as well as a Historical Studies B Core course, History 10a lacks an audience, a theoretical underpinning, and a function. The class presumes to cover well over two thousand years of Western history, scrambling to rush from archaic Greece to late antiquity in one month of lectures, the Middle Ages in another month, and the early modern period in what remains. Its only exciting aspect, that it is co-taught by three specialists, proves not to be enough: lecturers, rather than offering original arguments, simply attempt to give centuries the coverage they deserve. This task is too much for anyone, however, and last time the course was offered, crucial cultural movements such as the Renaissance were short-changed. At the same time, meaningful depth is sacrificed to the attempt to be comprehensive.

As an introductory course, History 10a is probably designed for first-year students and to help those undecided in their concentration choice. To excited college freshmen, it proves a huge disappointment. Centering on a textbook instead of original sources, it is sadly reminiscent of high school classes. It might be argued that an overview is indeed helpful since students clearly need to begin the study of history somewhere. But this optimism is an illusion. The image of the past presented in the course is so superficial that it helps students only in the most basic way and does not succeed in introducing them to the most important aspect of the History Department: the interpretation and discussion of primary sources.

In History 10a, primary sources are only a second thought, a decoration added to the textbook and lectures. Aidan E. Tait ’08, who took the course her freshman year (and who is also a Crimson editor), says that despite reading great works in History 10a, “We never managed to tie anything together or to relate the readings to the textbook or lectures at all. We never really grappled with the texts, and we never contextualized them.” Such a superficial, textbook-based narrative is not representative of the offerings of the History Department, which focus on much more restricted periods and areas, but above all offer deep, engaging arguments. Former History 10a student Amelia E. Atlas ’06 said that “with a coursepack full of five-page excerpts, it’s impossible to glean any in-depth meaning from a curriculum already spread too thin.”

Unbeknownst to the History Department, this lone course is probably the single most influential reason why undergraduates choose to concentrate in the “neighboring” fields of History and Literature or Social Studies instead of in History. Tait chose the History and Literature concentration because of her discouragement with the superficiality of History 10a.

If the course is disappointingly pointless for first-year students, it is an insult to anyone else. By the time they are sophomores or juniors, students have had the chance to savor much more sophisticated courses. Atlas says, “History 10a remains one of the most disappointing classes I have taken at Harvard. I enrolled hoping for an opportunity to understand the historical foundation of the modern periods that I study, but instead found a disorganized course that watered down 2,000 years of the past into an unrecognizable mess.” Most upperclassmen also perceive that the ideals on which History 10a is predicated are bankrupt: the very pretense to isolate a history of the West is artificial and does not reflect the many complicated intercultural interactions that the course’s professors themselves admit have been central. The course in general presents a primitive determinism, as if Western culture were an essence or a spirit which realized itself in the course of two millennia, thus betraying the sophisticated comparative analyses practiced by many Harvard historians.

It may be wrong to critique the conceptual basis of History 10a, for its probable goal is not to take a historiographical stance, but instead to fill the minds of all participants with the dates when Caesar was killed, Charlemagne crowned, and Columbus welcomed to the Caribbean. Such a pathetically humble goal can in fact be accomplished by reading a history textbook or two and should take no more than a week. In an undergraduate curriculum, it can be achieved in more imaginative ways, such as through a distributional requirement: one could, for instance, expect concentrators to take a pre-1500 class and a pre-1800 class. In addition, to ensure that no one graduates without knowing the meaning of, say, Christmas Day in 800 CE, such a distributional requirement might be accompanied by a test of broad historical facts, to be taken by the end of sophomore year, much in the way the English Department administers a close reading examination.

History 10a cannot be reformed and should be simply abolished. One year ago to this day, McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History Steven E. Ozment, then course head for History 10a, lamented that, even at Harvard, few undergraduates study anything prior to the 19th century. Perhaps removing the rudiments of “Western Civilization”-style teaching, which makes studying the ancient past unnecessarily boring, will improve that situation. It might also halt the flow of students moving from History to other concentrations. Incidentally, a distributional requirement would automatically increase the attendance of pre-modern courses. Freshmen shopping History 10a today, ponder your choice carefully. You can surely pick a more valuable experience for your precious first semester at Harvard. Meanwhile, join your peers in the hope that History 10a will not be with us much longer—with luck, it will be gone before your senior year.

Alexander Bevilacqua ’07, a Crimson editorial editor, is a history concentrator in Leverett House.