Links: Saul Friedländer, Martin Jay, Judith Butler and Hayden White

• Saul Friedländer: Trends in the historiography of the Holocaust (video)
• Why the humanities?, by Martin Jay (from early July)
• Willing the impossible: an interview with Judith Butler
• In Brazil, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo (UFES) will be holding the event The 40th Anniversary of Metahistory in October 10 to 13, 2013. The presence of many of the major commentators of White's work is confirmed:

Hayden White (University of California, USA)
Chris Lorenz (VU University Amsterdam, Holand)
Herman Paul (Leiden University, Holand)
Wulf Kansteiner (Binghamton University, New York USA)
Hans Kellner (North Carolina University,USA)
Ewa Domanska (AM University, Poznan, Poland)
Robert Doran (University of California, USA)
Claudio Fogu (University of California, USA)
Verónica Tozzi (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Kalle Pihlainen (Abo Akademi University, Finland)

More information in available at the event's website: http://metahistory-ufes.blogspot.com.br/

Why Literary Periods Mattered: Historical Contrast and the Prestige of English Studies, by Ted Underwood

Book description from SUP's website:

In the mid-nineteenth century, the study of English literature began to be divided into courses that surveyed discrete "periods." Since that time, scholars' definitions of literature and their rationales for teaching it have changed radically. But the periodized structure of the curriculum has remained oddly unshaken, as if the exercise of contrasting one literary period with another has an importance that transcends the content of any individual course.

Why Literary Periods Mattered explains how historical contrast became central to literary study, and why it remained institutionally central in spite of critical controversy about literature itself. Organizing literary history around contrast rather than causal continuity helped literature departments separate themselves from departments of history. But critics' long reliance on a rhetoric of contrasted movements and fateful turns has produced important blind spots in the discipline. In the twenty-first century, Underwood argues, literary study may need digital technology in particular to develop new methods of reasoning about gradual, continuous change.

Click here to buy Why Literary Periods Mattered: Historical Contrast and the Prestige of English Studies.

Conversations with History: Joan Wallach Scott

Source: UCBerkeleyEvents

Contributions to the History of Concepts, Volume 8, Issue 1 (Summer 2013): Concepts of Empire and Imperialism

Link here.

Table of contents

Articles

Introduction: The Longue Durée of Empire Toward a Comparative Semantics of a Key Concept in Modern European History 

Jörn Leonhard

Many a Standard at a Time: The Ottomans' Leverage with Imperial Studies 

Marc Aymes

Ottoman Concepts of Empire 

Einar Wigen

Radical Conservatism and Danish Imperialism: The Empire Built "Anew from Scratch" 

Christian Egander Skov

Spanish Imperial Destiny: The Concept of Empire during Early Francoism 

Zira Box

Reviews 

The Unknown History of Thinking Historically: A Review of Zachary Sayre Schiff man, The Birth of the Past

Victor Cazares

Democracy and the Ghost of Common Sense: A Review of Sophia Rosenfeld, Common Sense: A Political History

Itay Snir

Recasting the Crises of Democracies: A Review of Joris Gijsenbergh, Saskia Hollander, Tim Houwen, and Wim de Jong, eds., Creative Crises of Democracy

José María Rosales

An Intervention into the Politics of Wartime: A Review of Mary L. Dudziak, War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences

Ferenc Laczó

Imperialism in Japan: A Review of Anneli Wallentowitz, "Imperialismus" in der japanischen Sprache am Übergang vom 19. zum 20. Jahrhundert: Begriff sgeschichte im außereuropäischen Kontext ["Imperialism" in the Japanese language at the turn of the 20th century: A history of concepts in a non-European context]

Anja Osiander

Early Modern Debate on the Concept of State: A Review of Annabel S. Brett, Changes of State: Nature and the Limits of the City in Early Modern Natural Law

Heikki Haara

Source: Contributions to the History of Concepts' website

Modern Intellectual History, Volume 10, Issue 02, August 2013

Link here.

Table of contents

PUBLICITY, PRIVACY, AND RELIGIOUS TOLERATION IN HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN

ARASH ABIZADEH

THE FRENCH RECEPTION OF VÖLKERPSYCHOLOGIE AND THE ORIGINS OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

EGBERT KLAUTKE

KARL POLANYI AT THE MARGINS OF ENGLISH SOCIALISM, 1934–1947

TIM ROGAN

Forum: A World of Ideas: New Pathways in Global Intellectual History, c.1880–1930

FORUM: A WORLD OF IDEAS: NEW PATHWAYS IN GLOBAL INTELLECTUAL HISTORY, C.1880–1930

STEFANIE GÄNGER and SU LIN LEWIS

BETWEEN ORIENTALISM AND NATIONALISM: THE LEARNED SOCIETY AND THE MAKING OF “SOUTHEAST ASIA”

SU LIN LEWIS

UNDER THE INFLUENCE? TRANSLATIONS AND TRANSGRESSIONS IN LATE OTTOMAN IMPERIAL THOUGHT

ANDREW ARSAN

DISJUNCTIVE CIRCLES: MODERN INTELLECTUAL CULTURE IN CUZCO AND THE JOURNEYS OF INCAN ANTIQUITIES, C.1877–1921

STEFANIE GÄNGER

THE INDIAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN DISCIPLINE AND “THE DESTINY OF ONE NATION”, 1905–1947

ARIA LASKIN

Review Essays

THE STUDY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT IN THE IBERO-ATLANTIC WORLD DURING THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONS

GABRIEL PAQUETTE

WHY THEOLOGY NOW?

MARK A. NOLL

TOWARD A SYNTHESIS OF MORALITY IN AMERICA?

GAINES M. FOSTER

MASTERING THE UNMASTERABLE: HYSTERIA AND ITS HISTORY

KATJA GUENTHER

FILM, POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT, AND THE MELTING POT THROUGH THE LENS OF MODERNIST CULTURE

DANIEL J. SINGAL

FEMINISM'S HISTORY AND HISTORICAL AMNESIA

SARA M. EVANS

From History to Theory, by Kerwin Lee Klein

Book description

From Amazon:

From History to Theory describes major changes in the conceptual language of the humanities, particularly in the discourse of history. In seven beautifully written, closely related essays, Kerwin Lee Klein traces the development of academic vocabularies through the dynamically shifting cultural, political, and linguistic landscapes of the twentieth century. He considers the rise and fall of "philosophy of history" and discusses past attempts to imbue historical discourse with scientific precision. He explores the development of the "meta-narrative" and the post-Marxist view of history and shows how the present resurgence of old words - such as "memory" - in new contexts is providing a way to address marginalized peoples. In analyzing linguistic changes in the North American academy, From History to Theory innovatively ties semantic shifts in academic discourse to key trends in American society, culture, and politics.

Table of contents

From UC Press:

1. The Rise and Fall of Historiography
2. From Philosophy to Theory
3. Going Native: History, Language, and Culture
4. Postmodernism and the People without History
5. On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse
6. Remembrance and the Christian Right
Afterword: History and Theory in Our Time

Click here to buy From History to Theory.

Dark Traces of the Past: Psychoanalysis and Historical Thinking, edited by Jurgen Straub and Jörn Rüsen

Book description

From Amazon:

The relationship between historical studies and psychoanalysis remains an open debate that is full of tension, in both a positive and negative sense. In particular the following question has not been answered satisfactorily: what distinguishes a psychoanalytical-oriented study of historical realities from a historical psychoanalysis? Skepticism and fear of collaboration dominate on both sides. Initiating a productive dialogue between historical studies and psychoanalysis seems to be plagued by ignorance, and at times, a sense of helplessness. Interdisciplinary collaborations are rare. Empirical research, formulation of theory, and the development of methods are essentially carried out within the conventional disciplinary boundaries. This volume undertakes to overcome these limitations by combining psychoanalytical and historical perspectives and thus exploring the underlying "unconscious" dimensions and by informing academic and nonacademic forms of historical memory. Moreover, it puts special emphasis on transgenerational forms of remembrance, on the notion of trauma as a key concept in this field, and on case studies that point the way to further research.

Table of contents

From Berghahn Books:

Preface to the Series
Alon Confino

Introduction: Psychoanalysis, History and Historical Studies: A Systematic Introduction
Jürgen Straub

Part I: The Construction of Memory and Historical Consciousness

Chapter 1. Three Memory Anchors: Affect, Symbol, Trauma
Alaida Assmann

Chapter 2. Origin and Ritualisation of Historical Awareness: A Group Analytic View and an Ethnohermeneutic Case Reconstruction
Hans Bosse

Chapter 3. Identity, Overvaluation and Re-presentating Forgetting
Hinderk M. Emrich

Part II: Shoah: The Chain of Generations

Chapter 4. Transgenerational Trauma, Identification and Historical Consciousness
Werner Bohleber

Chapter 5. On the Myth of Objective Research after Auschwitz: Unconscious entanglements with the National Socialist past in the investigation of long-term psychosocial consequences of the Shoah in the Federal Republic of Germany
Kurt Grünberg

Chapter 6. Understanding Transgenerational Transmission: The Burden of History in Families of Jewish Victims and their National Socialist Perpetrators
Jürgen Straub

Part III: Case Studies in Psychoanalysis and Literary Critics

Chapter 7. On Social and Psychological Foundations of Anti-Semitism
Karola Brede

Chapter 8. From Religious Fantasies of Omnipotence to Scientific Myths of Emancipation: Freud and the Dialectics of Psychohistory
José Brunner

Chapter 9. Working Towards a Discourse of Shame: (Working with Shame Discourse) - A Psychoanalytical Perspective on Postwar German Literary Criticism
Irmgard Wagner

Click here to buy Dark Traces of the Past: Psychoanalysis and Historical Thinking.

Stephen Greenblatt: Shakespeare's Freedom

Re-Figuring Hayden White, edited by Frank Ankersmit, Ewa Domanska and Hans Kellner

From Amazon:

Produced in honor of White's eightieth birthday, Re-Figuring Hayden White testifies to the lasting importance of White's innovative work, which firmly reintegrates historical studies with literature and the humanities. The book is a major reconsideration of the historian's contributions and influence by an international group of leading scholars from a variety of disciplines. Individual essays address the key concepts of White's intellectual career, including tropes, narrative, figuralism, and the historical sublime while exploring the place of White's work in the philosophy of history, postmodernism, and ethics. They also discuss his role as historian and teacher and apply his ideas to specific historical events.

Table of Contents

From NLA:

Introduction: A Distinctively Human Life
Hans Kellner

Part I - Philosophy

Philosophy, an Introduction
Ewa Domanska

1. On the Metaphilosophy of History
David Carr

2. White's "New Neo-Kantianism": Aesthetics, Ethics, and Politics
Frank Ankersmit

3. Hayden White and the Crisis of Historicism
Herman Paul

Part II - Narrative

Narrative, an Introduction
Frank Ankersmit

4. Narrative Persistence: The Post-Postmodern Life of Narrative Theory
Nancy Partner

5. "Nobody Does It Better": Radical History and Hayden White
Keith Jenkins

6. Metahistory as Anabasis
Andrew Baird

7. History: Myth and Narrative: A Coda for Roland Barthes and Hayden White
Stephen Bann

Part III - Discourse

Discourse, an Introduction
Frank Ankersmit

8. "The Burden of History" Forty Years Later
David Harlan

9. The Rhetorical Dialectic of Hayden White
Allan Megill

10. Does the Sublime Price Explanation Out of the Historical Market?
Hans Kellner

11. History Beyond the Pleasure Principle?
Dominick LaCapra

Part IV - Practice

Practice, an Introduction
Ewa Domanska

12. Figuring the Malvinas War Experience: Heuristic and History as an Unfulfilled Promise
Veronica Tozzi

13. Primo Levi for the Present
Judith Butler

14. Hayden White, Historian
Richard Vann

15. Hayden White: An Academic Teacher
Ewa Domanska

Click here to buy Re-Figuring Hayden White.

Choices and emphases: some superficial thoughts on the AHA’s "Statement on Embargoing of History Dissertations"

There has been some discussion around the American Historical Association Statement on Policies Regarding the Embargoing of Completed History PhD Dissertations, published on July 22. (I'd post some other links, but there are plenty of them at the bottom of the page). On July 24, they posted a new text: Q&A on the AHA’s Statement on Embargoing of History Dissertations.
  

Most of the claims seems factually correct to me, though probably not all. The answers to the first two questions of the Q&A seems correct, so I won't comment on them. To the third question, "Don’t embargoes of dissertations primarily benefit book publishers?", the text answers negatively and mentions that "All historians should have the opportunity to revise their work before it is published". I'd observe, first, the dissertation is not necessarily an unfinished work. Second, that it would be entirely possible to dedicate some later time to revise a dissertation and republish it, even if not in paper and ink, if the presupposition that the book form is absolutely necessary to the profession was questioned. Since we historians know that any professional convention was born in a historical process, it is obviously possible to discuss whether is desirable to accept the conventions. One example is on the first text, where we read that "History has been and remains a book-based discipline". It is true that the discipline probably requires the construction of long arguments or narratives, but the book form has itself a history, one that shows that no press must necessarily be on the process. Agreeing or not that the historian must have the choice not to publish the dissertation online for free access, it is helpful to keep in mind that there is a possibility of opposing the current scenario. When we say "it is and remains like this", we're also helping it so stay this way.

The fourth question talks about it: "Why isn’t the AHA fighting for recognition of other forms of scholarship in hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions?". The text claims that the AHA alread does it, which I believe to be correct (I don't live in the United States, so it's just a supposition). Then we read: "At the same time, we recognize that, like it or not, many junior faculty who want to achieve tenure today must produce a published monograph. This reality guides our statement on embargoes; we seek to protect the interests of historians who are junior scholars". This sounds a fair description of what they are doing right now, and that is exactly the problem.

First because, by accepting to play the game without pointing out, in both texts, the bigger issues involved, the AHA legitimates its rules. Even if it might be fair to the young scholars to allow them to embargo their dissertations for six years, the conservative consequences of this legitimation need to be counteracted in the text itself. And though of course a possible discussion could be what count as "good", I'd assume that is generally agreed that the current rules of the game are not "good" not even for the junior scholars taken as a group. Even if they were, AHA’s proposal are not good for the action of the historians as responsible intellectuais in their society, since the exchange of researches helps to increase the quality of the works. If what keeps them to publish the dissertation is the politics of the profession, it is the politics itself that must be questioned. To argue for the individual choice, we must take in account what is involved in the very choice.
  

In this way, to focus on the individual or in the guild or in the society as a whole will conduct us to different views on what is desirable in this situation. So, when the text says "This reality guides our statement on embargoes" (emphasis added), what is at stake is (once we agree in the details about the reality, such as whether to publish the dissertation online reduces one’s chances to publish it by a major university press) in what part of the reality we should focus. And the reality don't count as an arbiter on where we will focus. So, I see at least two choices at stake here. The first is, to focus on the individuals (this junior scholar, that junior scholars) or in major groups (be it all junior scholars at the tenure-track, all the historians, whole societies or the humanity)? Second, to focus on the present as it is or in the possible changes can be done?

They are not either-or choices. The importance of keeping the multiplicity of possibilities in mind is exactly to allow us to think in various directions, individual-guild-society, past-present-future, at the sime time. However, if our focus is primarily on the individuals and primarily the present state of the things, it will be harder to be responsible towards the humanity and the future generations, even if we wish to do it.
    

Further reading
    

Hayden White, The Politics of Contemporary Philosophy of History. In: The Fiction of Narrative: Essays on History, Literature, and Theory, 1957-2007. Edited and introduced by Robert Doran. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.
   

I’d like to point out that I don’t claim to know much about tenure issues or AHA’s procedures. This text must be read only as a reflection on the discussion – which I read very superficially, by the way – and criticisms are welcome.
   

History in the Digital Age, by Toni Weller

Book description

From Amazon:

The digital age is affecting all aspects of historical study, but much of the existing literature about history in the digital age can be alienating to the traditional historian who does not necessarily value or wish to embrace digital resources. History in the Digital Age takes a more conceptual look at how the digital age is affecting the field of history for both scholars and students. The printed copy, the traditional archive, and analogue research remain key constitute parts for most historians and for many will remain precious and esteemed over digital copies, but there is a real need for historians and students of history to seriously consider some of the conceptual and methodological challenges facing the field of historical enquiry as we enter the twenty-first century.

Including international contributors from a variety of disciplines - History, English, Information Studies and Archivists – this book does not seek either to applaud or condemn digital technologies, but takes a more conceptual view of how the field of history is being changed by the digital age. Essential reading for all historians.

Click here to buy History in the Digital Age.

Derek Attridge: Beckett's Singularity: Reading the Trilogy Today

What is Microhistory? Theory and Practice, by Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and István M. Szijártó

Book description

From Amazon:

This unique and detailed analysis provides the first accessible and comprehensive introduction to the origins, development, methodology of microhistory – one of the most significant innovations in historical scholarship to have emerged in the last few decades.

The introduction guides the reader through the best-known example of microstoria, The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg, and explains the benefits of studying an event, place or person in microscopic detail. In Part I, István M. Szijártó examines the historiography of microhistory in the Italian, French, Germanic and the Anglo-Saxon traditions, shedding light on the roots of microhistory and asking where it is headed. In Part II, Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon uses a carefully selected case study to show the important difference between the disciplines of macro- and microhistory and to offer practical instructions for those historians wishing to undertake micro-level analysis. These parts are tied together by a Postscript in which the status of microhistory within contemporary historiography is examined and its possibilities for the future evaluated.

What is Microhistory? surveys the significant characteristics shared by large groups of microhistorians, and how these have now established an acknowledged place within any general discussion of the theory and methodology of history as an academic discipline.

Table of contents

From eBay:

Part I (Istvan M. Szijarto)
Introduction: Against simple truths.
Chapter 1: Italian microhistory.
Chapter 2: Under the impact of microstoria: the French and German perspective.
Chapter 3: Microhistory in a broader sense: the Anglo-Saxon landscape.
Chapter 4: The periphery and the new millennium: answers and new questions.

Part II (Sigurour Gylfi Magnusson)
Chapter 5: The doctor's tale: the living and the dead.
Chapter 6: Refashioning of famous French peasants.
Chapter 7: New and old theoretical issues: criticism of microhistory.
Chapter 8: A West Side story, and the one who gets to write it.
Postscript: To step into the same stream twice.

Click here to buy What is Microhistory?: Theory and Practice.

Watch on Youtube: The Soul of Brutes: A Sixteenth Century Debate with Carlo Ginzburg



Source: UCtelevision

History, Literature, Critical Theory, by Dominick LaCapra

Book description

From Amazon:

In History, Literature, Critical Theory, Dominick LaCapra continues his exploration of the complex relations between history and literature, here considering history as both process and representation. A trio of chapters at the center of the volume concern the ways in which history and literature (particularly the novel) impact and question each other. In one of the chapters LaCapra revisits Gustave Flaubert, pairing him with Joseph Conrad. Other chapters pair J. M. Coetzee and W. G. Sebald, Jonathan Littell's novel, The Kindly Ones, and Saul Friedlander's two-volume, prizewinning history Nazi Germany and the Jews.

A recurrent motif of the book is the role of the sacred, its problematic status in sacrifice, its virulent manifestation in social and political violence (notably the Nazi genocide), its role or transformations in literature and art, and its multivalent expressions in "postsecular" hopes, anxieties, and quests. LaCapra concludes the volume with an essay on the place of violence in the thought of Slavoj Zizek. In LaCapra's view Zizek's provocative thought "at times has uncanny echoes of earlier reflections on, or apologies for, political and seemingly regenerative, even sacralized violence."

Watch on Youtube: "J.M. Coetzee, The Historical, and The Literary"



Source: Cornell University

Click here to buy History, Literature, Critical Theory.

Dipesh Chakrabarty: In Retrospect: Subaltern Studies and Futures Past

On Historical Distance, by Mark Salber Phillips

Book description

From Amazon:

Conceptions of distance are foundational to historical thought, but Mark Salber Phillips gives the idea new subtlety and meaning. He argues that distance is a matter not just of time and space but also of form, affect, ideology, and understanding. In this exceptionally wide-ranging study, Phillips examines Renaissance, Enlightenment, and contemporary histories, as well as a broad spectrum of historical genres—including local history, literary history, counter-factual fiction, history painting, and museology.

“On Historical Distance is a fascinating and very important book that should be read by all historians. Beautifully written in elegant, economical and engaging prose, the book wears its considerable learning very lightly. A deeply original, challenging and thought-provoking study of the evolving history of history by one of our leading historians of historiography, this book should provoke a lively debate among historians and should be assigned as essential reading for classes on historical methods and historiography.”—John Marshall, John Hopkins University

Click here to buy On Historical Distance.

Audio and text files on Paul Ricoeur

On this link, you can access the texts presented at the Colloque International L’héritage littéraire de Paul Ricœur. Abstracts and programming can be read here.

Contents

Introduction
Micheline Cambron, Postures d’héritiers

Partie 1. Analyser l’héritage littéraire
Alexandre Gefen, « Retours au récit » : Paul Ricœur et la théorie littéraire contemporaine

Élucider
Jochen Mecke, Mimèsis et poièsis du temps : Paul Ricœur et la temporalité du roman (post-)moderne
Bastien Engelbach, Du modèle du récit à l’énonciation de soi

Débattre/s’opposer
Lambros Couloubaritsis, Les aléas de la configuration dans l’analyse littéraire de Paul Ricœur
Thomas Pavel, Suis-je un récit ? Réflexions sur la notion d’identité narrative

Partie 2. Inscrire les concepts en études littéraires
Appliquer les concepts à des œuvres ou à des genres
Sabrina Parent, Dans la lignée de Paul Ricœur : pour une « poéthique » de l’événement
Sophie Milquet, Personnage, récit et société face à l’événement guerrier

Développer/prolonger les concepts
Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Récit et identité humaine
Marjolaine Deschênes, Penser la création littéraire avec Paul Ricœur
Johanne Villeneuve, Inchoativité et témoignage. L’exemple des témoins du Rwanda
Peter McCormick, Paul Ricœur et le monde fictif

S’adosser aux concepts
Marielle Macé, Identité narrative ou identité stylistique ?
Gérard Langlade, Événement de lecture et reconfiguration des œuvres
Lucie Bourassa,Temps et discours, au-delà du récit. Le récit comme Zeitgerüst

Refigurer les concepts
François Dosse, La biographie à l’épreuve de l’identité narrative
Marie-José Fourtanier, Le texte est comme une partition musicale
Ioana Vultur, La communication littéraire selon Paul Ricœur

Partie 3. Présences de Ricœur au Québec
Suzanne Foisy, L’œuvre de Ricœur en transit. Sur quelques contributions à l’étude de l’influence de Ricœur au Québec et au Canada

Enjeux théoriques
Micheline Cambron, La société récitée. Sur la fécondité du concept d’identité narrative au Québec
Jacques Poulain, Communication et écriture : un différend phénoménologique entre Paul Ricœur et Jacques Derrida à Montréal en septembre 1971
David Carr, Récit personnel et récit historique. Ricœur et la philosophie de l’histoire

Contributions de Ricœur à l’histoire de la philosophie au Québec : témoignages
Jean Grondin, Une certaine manière herméneutique de faire de la philosophie. Petite reconnaissance de dette envers Paul Ricœur
Maurice Lagueux, Une force de travail stupéfiante et tellement inspirante !
Serge Cantin, Paul Ricœur et Fernand Dumont : un rendez-vous manqué
Luc Brisson, Ricœur et l’enracinement de la philosophie grecque dans le mythe. Montréal, entre Paris et Chicago
Yvan Lamonde, L’espace et le temps : Paul Ricœur à Montréal

2

Also, the audio files from the Colloque fonds Ricoeur, held in Paris in 2010, is available here.

Content:

La Mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli et ses dialogues (F.Dosse)

Frédéric Worms (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris) - Vie, mort et survie dans et après La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli.
Jeanne-Marie Gagnebin (Université de Campinas, Brésil) - Enterrer les morts : la tâche de l’historien chez W.Benjamin et P. Ricœur.
Morny Joy (University of Calgary, Canada) - Paul Ricœur in Dialogue with Hannah Arendt on Memory and Forgiveness.
Johann Michel (Université de Poitiers et EHESS) - La représentance comme ontologie historique.
Christian Delacroix (Université de Marne la vallée) - La réception historienne de La mémoire, l’histoire l’oubli.

La Shoah et sa représentation (S.Loriga)

François Azouvi (EHESS, Paris) - La réception de La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, en rapport avec la question de l’extermination des juifs.
Andris Breitling (Universitât Rostock, Institut fur Philosophie RFA) - L’exemplarité du singulier Auschwitz, un défi à la philosophie de l’histoire.
Jean-Michel Frodon (Critique et historien du cinéma) - La trace, l’archive, l’imaginaire?
Olivier Abel (IPT et EHESS) - La mémoire, l’histoire l’oubli, un monument d’inquiétude.

De la mémoire à l’histoire, et retour (O. Abel)

Philippe Joutard (EHESS-Université de Provence) - L’oubli comme construction de la mémoire collective.
Jean-Marie Schaeffer (EHESS, Paris) - Relation entre l’oublier individuel et l’oublier collectif.
François Hartog (EHESS) - L’inquiétante étrangeté de l’histoire.
François Dosse (Université Paris XII Créteil) - L’événement entre Kairos et Trace.
Nikolay Koposov (Helsinki University) - Défendre l’Etat: la loi mémorielle en Russie.

Témoignage et narration (JM.Schaeffer)

Annette Wieviorka (CNRS, Université Paris I) - Retour sur « L’ère du témoin ».
Smaranda Vultur (Université de l’Ouest de Timisoara, Roumanie) - Témoigner dans la Roumanie postcommuniste : entre mémoire et oubli.
Luba Jurgenson (Paris-IV Sorbonne) - Témoignage sur les violences de masse: approches épistémologiques.
Sabina Loriga (EHESS, Paris) - La mémoire entre l’histoire et la littérature.
Myriam Revault d’Allonnes (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris)

3

You can also access the most recent edition of Études Ricoeuriennes / Ricoeur Studies by clicking here.

History Man: The Life of R. G. Collingwood, by Fred Inglis

From Princeton University Press' site:

This is the first biography of the last and greatest British idealist philosopher, R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943), a man who both thought and lived at full pitch. Best known today for his philosophies of history and art, Collingwood was also a historian, archaeologist, sailor, artist, and musician. A figure of enormous energy and ambition, he took as his subject nothing less than the whole of human endeavor, and he lived in the same way, seeking to experience the complete range of human passion. In this vivid and swiftly paced narrative, Fred Inglis tells the dramatic story of a remarkable life, from Collingwood's happy Lakeland childhood to his successes at Oxford, his archaeological digs as a renowned authority on Roman Britain, his solo sailing adventures in the English Channel, his long struggle with illness, and his sometimes turbulent romantic life.

In a manner unheard of today, Collingwood attempted to gather all aspects of human thought into a single theory of practical experience, and he wrote sweeping accounts of history, art, science, politics, metaphysics, and archaeology, as well as a highly regarded autobiography. Above all, he dedicated his life to arguing that history--not science--is the only source of moral and political wisdom and self-knowledge.

Linking the intellectual and personal sides of Collingwood's life, and providing a rich history of his milieu, History Man also assesses Collingwood's influence on generations of scholars after his death and the renewed recognition of his importance and interest today.

Table of Contents:

Preface
Chapter 1: By Coniston Water
Chapter 2: Brought Up by Hand: The Moral Point of English Public Schools
Chapter 3: Oxford and the Admiralty: The Science of Human Affairs; God and the Devil
Chapter 4: Against the Realists: Liberalism and the Italians
Chapter 5: On Hadrian's Wall: "Question-and-Answer logic
Chapter 6: The Idea of the Ideas: The New Science
Chapter 7: "Fighting in the Daylight": Metaphysics against Fascism
Chapter 8: The Valley of the Shadows: Java, Oxford, Greece
Chapter 9: The Passionate Man's Pilgrimage: On Barbarism and Civilisation
Chapter 10: The Time of the Preacher: Collingwood's Resurrection

Click here to read the first chapter at the Princeton University Press' website.
Click here to buy History Man: The Life of R. G. Collingwood.

Robert Brandom: Reason, Genealogy and the Hermeneutics of Magnanimity

Out today: An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns, by Bruno Latour

Book description

From Amazon:

In this new book, Bruno Latour offers answers to questions raised in We Have Never Been Modern, a work that interrogated the connections between nature and culture. If not modern, he asked, what have we been, and what values should we inherit? Over the past twenty-five years, Latour has developed a research protocol different from the actor-network theory with which his name is now associated--a research protocol that follows the different types of connectors that provide specific truth conditions. These are the connectors that prompt a climate scientist challenged by a captain of industry to appeal to the institution of science, with its army of researchers and mountains of data, rather than to "capital-S Science" as a higher authority. Such modes of extension--or modes of existence, Latour argues here--account for the many differences between law, science, politics, and other domains of knowledge.

Though scientific knowledge corresponds to only one of the many possible modes of existence Latour describes, an unrealistic vision of science has become the arbiter of reality and truth, seducing us into judging all values by a single standard. Latour implores us to recover other modes of existence in order to do justice to the plurality of truth conditions that Moderns have discovered throughout their history. This systematic effort of building a new philosophical anthropology presents a completely different view of what Moderns have been, and provides a new basis for opening diplomatic encounters with other societies at a time when all societies are coping with ecological crisis.

More

Click here to see the table of contents and here to read the first chapter at Latour's site.

Click here to buy An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns.

Authoring the Past: Writing and Rethinking History, edited by Alun Munslow

Book description 

From Amazon:

Please explain why you think about and write history as you do?

Collecting together the responses to this question from 15 of the world’s foremost historians and theorists, Authoring the Past represents a powerful reflection on and intervention in the historiographical field.

Edited by Alun Munslow and presented in concise digestible essays, the collection covers a broad range of contemporary interests and ideas and offers a rich set of reasoned alternative thoughts on our cultural engagement with times gone by. Emerging from an intensely fertile period of historical thought and practice, Authoring the Past examines the variety of approaches to the discipline that have taken shape during this time and suggests possible future ways of thinking about and interacting with the past. It provides a unique insight into recent debates on the nature and purpose of history and demonstrates that when diverse metaphysical and aesthetic choices are made, the nature of the representation of the past becomes a matter of legitimate dispute. Students, scholars and practitioners of history will find it a stimulating and invaluable resource.

Table of contents

Introduction
Alun Munslow

1. Writing, Rewriting the Beach: an Essay
Greg Dening

2. After History
Keith Jenkins

3. History Is Public or Nothing
Alice Kessler-Harris

4. I am not a baseball historian
Steven A. Reiss

5. Beyond History
Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth

6. Practices of Historical Narrative
Richard Price

7. More Secondary Modern than Postmodern
Patrick Joyce

8. Rethinking History
Frank Ankersmit

9. Confessions of a Postmodern(?) Historian
Robert A. Rosenstone

10. The Story of My Engagements with the Past
Peter Munz

11. In Search of Ariadne's Thread
Beverley Southgate

12. Invitation to Historians
C. Behan McCullagh

13. An Intellectual Self-Portrait or the Story of a historian
Peter Burke

14. History, the Historian and an Autobiography
Jeremy D. Popkin

15. Invitation to Historians
Alex Macfie

Click here to buy Authoring the Past: Writing and Rethinking History.

The Future of History, by Alun Munslow

Book description

From Amazon:

Deploying a range of key concepts such as scepticism, aesthetics, ethics, standpoint, irony, authorship and a new understanding of truth, The Future of History examines history as a form of knowledge, arguing that in the future the multiple forms of its expression will be as significant as its content.

Table of contents

From MacMillan:

Introduction
The Epistemological Problem
What Do Conventional Historians Do?
Multi-Scepticism and History
Relativism, Ethics and Scepticism
Irony
The Modes of Historical Irony
The Ironic Self and History
Standpoint and Subjectivity
Responsibility
Epistomology and Aesthetics
Authorship
Form before Content
Experimental History
Expressionist History
Conclusion
Further Reading

Click here to buy The Future of History.

Lynn Hunt: Inventing Human Rights

“On W. B. Gallie’s Philosophy and the Historical Understanding”

Published in 1964, W. B. Gallie’s Philosophy and the Historical Understanding is part of a paradigmatic change in the Anglo-Saxon philosophy of history. Since Carl Hempel’s The Function of the General Laws in History (1942), the main discussion in this incipient field was whether the historical explanation fitted the “covering law model”, according to which a particular event is explained when, and only when, subsumed to a general law. In the first place, it helped to increase the philosophers’ awareness that history at least can explain its matter by organizing events into a narrative. In the second place, it took part on the replacement of the a-historical “World according to Hempel” for the historical “World according to Kuhn”, to use Arthur Danto's words.[1] Two notions, followability and “essentially contested concepts”, mark his enterprise.

1. Followability

History, Gallie pointed out, “is a species of the genus Story”. It didn’t meant that there is no difference between a historical story and a fictional one, because the former was based on evidences and exhibited to its reader “its interconnections with other relevant historical evidence and results”. Still, the historical narratives are “followable or intelligible in the same general way that all stories are”.

For this reason, to develop his notion of followability, Gallie’s first step was to answer the question “what is a story?”. In Hempel’s covering law model, explanation and prediction were treated as logically similar. In Gallie’s view, this model couldn’t be applied to the analysis of narratives of any kind. When the reader follows the narrative towards its conclusion, what he or she finds is not a conclusion of the same type as the one found in a deduction or a prediction. Even if the conclusion was predicted by the reader, much more important in a story is the relation that allows us to see the logical connection by which the comprehension of a later event requires, as a necessary condition, the previous event. The sequences of “internal conclusions” are followed because we want to get to the “final conclusion”. This latter one is distinguished from the others because is the focus on the reader’s interest almost from the beginning: “it is chiefly in terms of the conclusion - eagerly awaited as we read forward and accepted the story's end - that we feel the unity of a story”.

The kind of understanding one gets by following a story, in Gallie’s view, can be compared to the following of a cricket match. When the viewer requires an explanation of what happened, his or her goal is not to eliminate the contingencies,[2] as happens in the scientific kind of explanations, in which there can be predictions: in fact, an unpredictable play can be followed by the spectator with no difficulties. The goal of the explanations (or, let’s say, to keep with the comparison, of the clarification of a rule in a play not understood by the viewer) is only to allow him or her to keep following the game. The one who follows a story, accordingly, reaches a kind of understanding very different of the scientific one. If the explanation required by the follower of the story can be compared to one that helps the enthusiast to keep following the game, the one searched for the scientist can be compared to one that interests a gambler, whose main interest is the final result of the game, independently of its development.

Notes
[1] DANTO, Arthur C. The decline and fall of the analytical philosophy of history. In: ANKERSMIT, Frank & KELLNER, Hans (Eds.). A New Philosophy of History. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995.
[2] Mink observes that “Gallie does not define ‘contingent’ but he remains stoutly phenomenological in using it: it always means for him ‘surprising’ or ‘unexpected in the circumstances,’ rather than ‘not subject to law’ or ‘not predictable in principle.’” (Historical Understanding. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1987, p, 134).

This post is part of the series: “On W. B. Gallie’s Philosophy and the Historical Understanding”
Part 1: Followability
Part 2: Essentially contested concepts

Further reading 

William H. Dray, Laws and Explanation in History (1957). Dray’s book is the first solid reaction to Hempel’s “covering law model” to point out that historians might “explain” by telling a story, and not only and not necessarily by subsuming particular events to general laws.

Louis O. Mink, Philosophical Analysis and Historical Understanding (1968), republished in his Historical Understanding (1987). In this review essay, Mink discusses Morton White’s Foundations of Historical Knowledge, Gallie’s Philosophy and the Historical Understanding and Danto’s Analytical Philosophy of History. In his opinion, Gallie describes very well the non-reflexive reading of a historical text, but ignores the fundamental fact that the historian already knows “the end of the game”. The implications of this difference are further developed in the magisterial History and Fiction as Modes of Comprehension (1970).

Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973). This groundbreaking work tries, among other things, to develop an ideal model of the historical text. Gallie’s “followable story” is taken as part of a bigger whole, which also includes the plot, the argument and the ideological implication. Also, as Hens Kellner indicated (link), White treats the “historical explanation” debate as “essentially contested”, in the sense that there is not, for him, one single correct way to produce “explanation effects”.

A History of History, by Alun Munslow

From Amazon.com:

In a provocative analysis of European and American historical thinking and practice since the early 18th century, A History of History confronts several basic assumptions about the nature of history. Among these are the concept of historical realism, the belief in representationalism and the idea that the past possesses its own narrative. What is offered in this book is a far-reaching and fundamental rethinking of realist and representationalist ‘history of a particular kind’ by addressing and explaining the ideas of major philosophers of history over the past three hundred years and those of the key theorists of today. In pursuing this radical analysis, the understanding of history as a narrative is evaluated along with contemporary notions such as the continuing presence of the past and the idea of ‘its lessons’. Written by one of the leading thinkers on the subject, A History of History provides an accessible and radical history of history while offering new insights into the pressing questions of the nature, purpose and function of history. This book is an essential text for all students, teachers and consumers of history.

Table of Contents

From Booktopia.com:

Introduction
The Emergence of Modern Historical Thinking
History as Science
Forms of History Today
History of a Particular Kind and the Rise of the Multi-Sceptic Historian
Refiguring the Past
An Improper Contempt for Proper History
The Presence of the Past
The End of (a) Historical Consciousness (of a Particular Kind)
Conclusion

Click here to buy A History of History.

The SAGE Handbook of Historical Theory, edited by Nancy Partner and Sarah Foot

Book description

From SAGE's website:

The editors introduce the core areas of current debate within historical theory, bringing the reader as up to date with continuing debates and current developments as is possible. The book is divided into three parts, covering:

Part I. Foundations: The Theoretical Grounds for Knowledge of the Past
Part II. Applications: Theory-Intensive Areas in History
Part III. Coda. Post-Postmodernism: Directions and Interrogations

This important handbook brings together in one volume discussions of the role of modernity, empiricism, realism, post-modernity and deconstruction in the historian’s craft. Chapters are written by leading writers from around the world and cover a wide spread of historical sub-disciplines, such as social history, intellectual history, narrative, gender, memory, psycho-analysis and cultural studies, taking in, along the way, the work of thinkers such as Paul Ricouer, Michel Foucault and Hayden White.

The Sage Handbook of Historical Theory is an essential resource for practicing historians, and students of history, and will appeal to scholars in related disciplines in the social sciences and humanities who seek a closer understanding of the theoretical foundations of history.

Table of contents

Part One: Foundations: Theoretical Frameworks for Knowledge of the Past
Nancy Partner

Modernity and History: The Professional Discipline

The Turn towards 'Science': Historians Delivering Untheorized Truth
Michael Bentley

The Implications of Empiricism for History
Lutz Raphael

The Case for Historical Imagination: Defending the Human Factor and Narrative
Jan van der Dussen

The Annales School: Variations on Realism, Methods and Time
Joseph Tendler

Intellectual History: From Ideas to Meanings
Donald R. Kelley

Social History: A New Kind of History
Brian Lewis

Postmodernism: The Linguistic Turn and Historical Knowledge

The Work of Hayden White I: Mimesis, Figuration, and the Writing of History
Robert Doran

The Work of Hayden White II: Defamiliarizing Narrative
Kalle Pihlainen

Derrida and Deconstruction: Challenges to the Transparency of Language
Robert M. Stein

The Return of Rhetoric
Hans Kellner

Michel Foucault: The Unconscious of History and Culture
Clare O'Farrell

History as Text: Narrative Theory and History
Ann Rigney

The Boundaries of History and Fiction
Ann Curthoys and John Docker

Part Two: Applications: Theory-Intensive Areas of History
Nancy Partner

The Newest Social History: Crisis and Renewal
Brian Lewis

Women's History/Feminist History
Judith P. Zinsser

Gender I: From Women's History to Gender History
Bonnie Smith

Gender II: Masculinity Acquires a History
Karen Harvey

Sexuality and History
Amy Richlin

Psychoanalysis and the Making of History
Michael Roper

New National Narratives
Kevin Foster

Cultural Studies and History
Gilbert B. Rodman

Memory: Witness, Experience, Collective Meaning
Patrick H. Hutton

Postcolonial Theory and History
Benjamin Zachariah

Part Three: Coda: Post-Postmodernism: Directions and Interrogations
Nancy Partner

Post-Positivist Realism: Regrounding Representation
John H. Zammito

Historical Experience beyond the Linguistic Turn
Frank Ankersmit

Photographs: Reading the Image for History
Judith Keilbach

Digital Information: 'Let a hundred flowers bloom…' Is Digital a Cultural Revolution?
Valerie Johnson and David Thomas

Recovering the Self: Agency after Deconstruction
David Gary Shaw

The Fundamental Things Apply: Aristotle's Narrative Theory and the Classical Origins of Postmodern History
Nancy Partner

Source: SAGE

Click here to buy The SAGE Handbook of Historical Theory.

Carlo Ginzburg: Looking at Europe from the Orient

Source: Central European University

Visual Time: The Image in History, by Keith Moxey

Book description

From Amazon.com:

Visual Time offers a rare consideration of the idea of time in art history. Non-Western art histories currently have an unprecedented prominence in the discipline. To what extent are their artistic narratives commensurate with those told about Western art? Does time run at the same speed in all places? Keith Moxey argues that the discipline of art history has been too attached to interpreting works of art based on a teleological categorization—demonstrating how each work influences the next as part of a linear sequence—which he sees as tied to Western notions of modernity. In contrast, he emphasizes how the experience of viewing art creates its own aesthetic time, where the viewer is entranced by the work itself rather than what it represents about the historical moment when it was created. Moxey discusses the art, and writing about the art, of modern and contemporary artists, such as Gerard Sekoto, Thomas Demand, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Cindy Sherman, as well as the sixteenth-century figures Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald, and Hans Holbein. In the process, he addresses the phenomenological turn in the study of the image, its application to the understanding of particular artists, the ways verisimilitude eludes time in both the past and the present, and the role of time in nationalist accounts of the past.

Click here to buy Visual Time: The Image in History.

Philosophy of History After Hayden White, edited by Robert Doran

Book description

From Bloomsbury's website:

This anthology of new essays by an international group of preeminent scholars explores the ground-breaking work of Hayden White, whose thought, beginning with his seminal Metahistory (1973), has revolutionized the way we think about the philosophy of history, historiography, narrative, and the relation between history and literature. Representing a variety of disciplines and approaches, the contributions to this volume testify to the far-reaching effects and significance of White's philosophy of history. Individual essays relate White's ideas to contemporary art, cognitive studies, Heideggerian hermeneutics, experimental history, Kant's transcendental philosophy, analytic philosophy of history, Marxist cultural theory, the Kantian sublime, and American academic historiography.

A substantial introduction by the editor traces the genesis of White's philosophy of history, situating it with respect to both the Anglo-American and Continental traditions. The volume also features a previously unpublished essay by White, which offers a concise overview of his later thought, and a "Comment" written specifically for this volume, in which White revisits the question of the philosophy of history.

Table of contents

Introduction: Choosing the Past: Hayden White and the Philosophy of History
Robert Doran

1. History as Fulfillment
Hayden White

2. A Cognitivist Approach to Tropology
F. R. Ankersmit

3. Deliver Us from A-Historicism: Metahistory for Non-Historians
Mieke Bal

4. Hayden White's Hope, or the Politics of Prefiguration
Karyn Ball

5. Hayden White and Me: Two Systems of Philosophy of History
Arthur C. Danto

6. Uneven Temporalities / Untimely Pasts: Hayden White and the Question of Temporal Form
Harry Harootunian

7. Hopeful Monsters or, The Unfulfilled Figure in Hayden White's Conceptual System
Hans Kellner

8. Rhetorical Theory / Theoretical Rhetoric: Some Ambiguities in the Reception of Hayden White's Work
Gabrielle M. Spiegel

9. Hayden White and Non-non-Histories
Richard T. Vann

10. From the Problem of Evil to Hermeneutic Philosophy of History: For Hayden White
Gianni Vattimo

11. Comment
Hayden White

Click here to buy Philosophy of History After Hayden White.

Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind, by David Herman

Book description

From Amazon.com:

With Storytelling and the Science of Mind, David Herman proposes a cross-fertilization between the study of narrative and research on intelligent behavior. This cross-fertilization goes beyond the simple importing of ideas from the sciences of mind into scholarship on narrative and instead aims for convergence between work in narrative studies and research in the cognitive sciences. The book as a whole centers on two questions: How do people make sense of stories? And: How do people use stories to make sense of the world? Examining narratives from different periods and across multiple media and genres, Herman shows how traditions of narrative research can help shape ways of formulating and addressing questions about intelligent activity, and vice versa.

Using case studies that range from Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to sequences from The Incredible Hulk comics to narratives told in everyday interaction, Herman considers storytelling both as a target for interpretation and as a resource for making sense of experience itself. In doing so, he puts ideas from narrative scholarship into dialogue with such fields as psycholinguistics, philosophy of mind, and cognitive, social, and ecological psychology. After exploring ways in which interpreters of stories can use textual cues to build narrative worlds, or storyworlds, Herman investigates how this process of narrative worldmaking in turn supports efforts to understand -- and engage with -- the conduct of persons, among other aspects of lived experience.

See also: "Narrative Worldmaking in Words and Images"



Video description from Youtube.com: "... keynote talk for the 2013 Symposium on Emerging Genres, Forms, Narratives—in New Media Environments. Held by the North Carolina State University program in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media".

Source: NC State Doctoral Program in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media (CRDM)

Click here to buy Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind.