Divide the class into groups with an equal number of students. Give them 20 minutes to discuss the readings using the information below. Open up the following site: https://jeopardylabs.com/play/marxism17 and run a game of jeopardy. Winning team gets most discussion points for the day. Game last about 30 minutes.
Gilderhus –
Marx’s ideas of class struggle, how goods obtain their value, what is dialectical materialism and where did it come from, what did Marx see as the point of history
Marx & Engels –
What makes men different from animals, how is an individual’s identity determined, what is the relationships between society/politics and production, what is the division of labor and how is it established, when and how does history start
The Editors –
What is their view of using natural science, social science methods, and romanticism to study/examine history, what is the point of their new journal, what is the point of studying history
E.P. Thompson –
What is class, what are some of the wrong ways others look at class, what is class-consciousness and how is it established, what are some of the wrong ways of studying class-consciousness
General Discussion Questions for after Jeopardy:
- How does Marx differ from previous authors we’ve read?
- So do you agree with how Marx sees the world?
- How might periodization differ in histories written by Marxists compared to histories written by Romantic or Ancient or Enlightenment historians?
- What kinds of things are left out Marx’s analysis?
- Is Marxist analysis a useful tool for historians or not? What are some benefits to this approach? What are some drawbacks to this approach?