The Great Pamphlets Many courses are devoted to the great books of civilization, but historians increasingly wonder how many contemporaries really read them. Pamphlets, on the other hand, have consistently been among the most popular, persuasive, and political texts around. Emerging as a form of mass media in the European Reformation, the form has served the subversives of pre-revolutionary France and England, and been adopted by figures from Martin Luther to Simon Bolivar, Karl Marx, Rosa Luxembourg, and Upton Sinclair. We will examine the pamphlet as a form across genres (memoir, manifesto, essay, exposé, etc.) and historical contexts, reading specific examples as a way into broader questions of literacy, rebellion, and authority: crucial vehicles for both revolutionary and reactionary ideas.

Insurgent Literacy in Europe, 1300-1800 Texts were an integral part of European life long before widespread literacy or the printing press. Reading and using documents was conducted communally in households, neighborhoods, and other groups. Reading primary sources from western Europe c.1300-1800, we will study how the increased circulation of documents shaped emerging modern institutions like newspapers, archives, bureaucracies – and even the state apparatus itself. After some theoretical groundwork on literacy and power from thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Max Weber and James C. Scott, we will read charters, pamphlets, indulgences, letters, and graffiti that entered the city streets. Against this background we will finally consider whether the printing press was revolutionary in shaping European politics, looking especially at the ideas of Luther, Hobbes, and Rousseau.  Ron Makleff is a historian of Europe focusing on cities and the emergence of the nation-state, as well as the material and intellectual legacies of archives as institutions of power, memory, and forgetting./

The Information State: from the Library of Alexandria to the Snowden Files How do states see and know the world? Our sources will shuttle back-and-forth between recent examples like the United States’ surveillance apparatus, and historical phenomena like the Inka khipu record-keeping system of knotted strings. We will see that administrators have long dreamt of ruling rationally through the collection and mobilization of data. Whether we are dominated by the ‘information state’ or live under ‘surveillance capitalism’ – some deeper context on the ways various institutions have used information as a means of control in the past can help us understand controversial phenomena today: from authentication and metadata to surveillance, searchability, and planned obsolescence.

The Medieval City and Communal Thought, 1200-1919 In this course we will examine the legacy of the medieval European city in communal political thought between the thirteenth and early twentieth centuries. We begin with texts produced by medieval legists, philosophers, and chroniclers such as Philippe de Beaumanoir, Thomas More, and Jean Froissart. Using contemporary scholarship on medieval urban phenomena like guilds, charity, and the commune as a foundation, we then study a series of nineteenth-century radicals who placed aspects of the medieval city at the center of their communal thought: Marx, Engels, Kropotkin, Rosa Luxemburg, Proudhon, Matilda Gage, and Kautsky. These voices represent unexpected mobilizations of the medieval past as inspiration, lesson, and analytical category for understanding the radical outpourings that shook Europe c. 1848-1919. Ron Makleff is a historian of late medieval and early modern Europe focusing on cities, the emergence of the nation-state, and the material and intellectual legacies of archives as institutions of power, memory and forgetting./

Ron Makleff

Reviews and ratings for Ron Makleff at Middlebury College.Ron Makleff teaches The Great Pamphlets, Insurgent Literacy in Europe, Information State Across Ages and more.  Explore top rated instructors and find the best for you.Is Ron Makleff good ? Find out on MiddCourses.

I enjoyed this class, even though the topic did not interest me all that much. Professor Ron is very nice and accommodating and the grading is pretty easy. Class usually consists of discussing the readings we had for homework and then discussing new pieces.