Cfp: "A Past That Has Never Been Present? Art / Philosophy / History," University of King's College, June 8-11

Keynote Speakers:

• Cathy Caruth (Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Comparative Literature and English, Emory University)
• Leonard Lawlor (Sparks Professor of Philosophy, Penn State University)

This interdisciplinary conference, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, will bring together scholars from various disciplines to explore the ways in which Maurice Merleau-Ponty's reference to "a past that has never been present" in The Phenomenology of Perception might be said to challenge our conventional notion of memory as a past perception, and so also to complicate our understanding of what is at stake in represen, ting the past as an object of experience.

Given Merleau-Ponty's claim that this "original past" is not to be interpreted on the basis of consciousness, perception or bodily engagement with the world, might the notion of a "past that has never been present" provide a new angle of inquiry in our explorations of temporality and its rupturing, memory disorders and obsessions with the past, in short, a thinking of representation that moves beyond a subject-object dichotomy?

Papers are welcome from scholars in philosophy, arts and art history, film studies, architecture, literary studies, history, trauma studies and/or psychoanalysis. Conference organizers will select a number of papers for subsequent publication. Paper proposals should provide a) name/institutional affiliation; b) 250-word abstract of proposed paper.

We invite proposals on such topics as:

Belatedness
The primal scene (psychoanalytic interventions)
Questions of messianism
Nostalgia
Augustine (confession, time, memory)
Politics of Foundation / Revolution
Merleau-Ponty / Levinas / Bergson/ Deleuze
Proust (In Search of Lost Time)
Difference and Repetition
Revisiting Trauma
Mourning and Melancholy
Film and New Technologies (Digital Reproducibility)
Traces and Materiality

Deadline for proposals is December 15, 2010.

Please send submissions electronically to sarah.clift@ukings.ns.ca.

Pub: HISTORY AND THEORY (October 2010).

JONAS GRETHLEIN, “Experientiality and ‘Narrative Reference’ with Thanks to Thucydides” takes up the recent interest in experience and its relation to narrative, and does so with great flair and illumination. Postmodernist theorists declared the idea of experience dead, but this idea has recently seen a renaissance, seeming to offer the possibility of reaching beyond linguistic discourse. Indeed, some theorists, in their attempt to overcome the “linguistic turn,” have pitted experience against narrative. But Grethlein convincingly argues that the relation between experience and narrative is more complex than is widely assumed, and in the process he sheds light on techniques that historians can and should use to render history more accessible and more open.

HUAIYIN LI, “From Revolution to Modernization: the Paradigmatic Transition in Chinese Historiography in the Reform Era,” offers a rigorous, informative analysis of exactly what the title promises, namely, the way Chinese historiography has changed from embodying Marxism to adopting Modernization Theory, but all the while keeping an unchanged commitment to serving present political needs in the way the past is interpreted.

BENJAMIN ALDES WURGAFT, “The Uses of Walter: Walter Benjamin and the Counterfactual Imagination” notes that many authors, both scholarly and otherwise, have asked what might have happened had Walter Benjamin survived his 1940 attempt to escape Nazi-occupied Europe. In answering this question Wurgaft not only shows important dimensions of Benjamin and his work, but also explores the larger question of why few intellectual historians ask explicitly counterfactual questions in their work—and why they should. The essay can only be described as elegant, both in conception and in its writing.

The issue also contains a comprehensive “Retrospective” of a historical classic, Norbert Elias’s The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. The article offers an overview and assessment of this work by two authors—ANDREW LINKLATER and STEPHEN MENNELL—who know more about Elias’s work than perhaps anyone else in the world, and who write with great insight about both the details of Elias’s work and also about the larger intellectual implications of it. If you want to understand the meaning and import of this great book, this is the place to look.

The issue also contains a number of wide-ranging, provocative review essays:
WILLIAM M. REDDY on Daniel Lord Smail, On Deep History and the Brain;
RAYMOND MARTIN on Allan Megill, Historical Knowledge, Historical Error: a Contemporary Guide to Practice (free download here: http://www.historyandtheory.org/freereview.html);
HARRY HAROOTUNIAN on Christopher L. Hill, National History and the World of Nations: Capital, State, and the Rhetoric of History in Japan, France, and the United States

Visit: http://www.historyandtheory.org/journal.html.

Cfp: Harrison, Christine, and Angeliki Spiropoulou, eds. HISTORY AND CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. SYNTHESIS 5 (2012).

Deadlines:

1 December 2010 submission of abstracts
1 February 2011 notification of acceptance
1 October 2011 submission of articles

The ‘turn to history’, witnessed in both literary studies and literature since the 1980s, has ensued in part from new developments in the theory of history itself, which have stressed the relevance of literature for history and the affinity of historiography with fictional narration, long suppressed by historiography’s traditional empirical status and positivist claim to truth (c.f. the groundbreaking work of Hayden White and Paul Ricoeur, as well as that of Michel Foucault, Stephen Greenblatt and Dominick LaCapra, for example). The turn to history has, inversely, also derived from an acknowledgement of the need to take into account the historicity of the historiographical, literary and critical acts. Fredric Jameson, for example, contributed to the elaboration of a sophisticated notion of historicity in the field of literary studies in the early 80s, and at much the same time there also appeared ‘new historicist’ and ‘cultural materialist’ trends, inspired by diverse history-based theoretical paradigms.

Simultaneously, and related to the above developments, there has emerged a trend within literature itself of evoking historical epochs, personages and texts of the past, culminating in what Linda Hutcheon has called with reference to fiction ‘historiographical metafiction’, namely a set of texts which exhibits a concern with the historical past and with issues of historiography while retaining an acute language consciousness and a leaning to formal experimentation. Even more recently, over the past decade, both historicist models of criticism and established theorizations of new historical literature have been challenged for some of their presumptions. However, historical literature, and especially fiction, continues to dominate the literary production of the twenty-first century in forms and for reasons that need exploring as they may point to yet newer directions in both literature and the conceptualization of the relationship between history and literature.

We invite contributions that engage with the modes in which contemporary fiction, poetry and drama address, employ and revise history and historiographical practices, and/or discuss new critical trends and theoretical approaches to literature and history. Possible topics include, but are not restricted to:
• New trends and subjects of historiographical representation in contemporary poetry, fiction, drama (e.g., gender and topographical approaches; interrogations of particular historical periods, methodologies and mythologies; challenges to divides between the literary/popular and private/public; contemporary historical literature and realism, modernism, postmodernism)
• Revisions of literary history, the literary canon and traditional literary genres (e.g., the historical novel, historical drama, gothic romance)
• New directions in historical literature and critical approaches since 2000
• National/regional contemporary historical literature
• Re-writings of colonial history and the history of the European periphery (Balkan, Mediterranean) through literature
• Memory, auto/biography, visual material and contemporary literature
• Historical fantasies and utopias of the future
• The past-present dialogue in contemporary theory and literature
• New challenges to recent historicist models and critical taxonomies of contemporary historical literature

Detailed proposals (800-1,000 words) for articles of 6,000- 7,000 words, a short bio (up to 300 words) as well as all inquiries regarding this issue, should be sent to both guest editors: Christine Harrison at and Angeliki Spiropoulou.

For their details please contact:

Mata Dimakopoulou
Faculty of English Studies
University of Athens, Greece
Email: sdimakop@enl.uoa.gr.

Worster, Donald. "Historians and Nature." THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR (Spring 2010).

In biology the evolutionist tries to explain change over time by constructing what evolutionary biologist Ernst W. Mayr calls a “historical narrative.” Such a narrative addresses questions like these: Why did this trait appear in an organism when it did, what function did it serve? How did it reshape the whole organism and help it reproduce itself? When did the trait decline and disappear? These are good questions for historians as well as biologists to pursue. They should lead us to create narratives around changes in soil or climate conditions and in accessibility of resources and to relate those changes to technological innovation, the rules people make up and follow, and the moral ideals they invent to guide their relations with the natural world.

Telling such stories would require that historians follow the natural sciences by taking the environment more seriously as a force in human life. Historians would need to acknowledge, with the aid of evolutionary psychology, the reality of a human nature that evolves through time. At the same time they would need to think about the role of cultural beliefs and rules as a quasi-independent but never isolated force on the planet–a force that never functions in an ecological void, a force that can have a devastating effect on other forms of life and can enhance or threaten our survival.

The human mind is remarkable for finding multiple pathways through the natural world, but those paths are always contingent on what came before and what is happening now to the planet. Historians need to acknowledge the importance of the environment and to embrace the theory and worldview of evolution for the dazzling light it sheds on the origins, development, and fate of humanity. . . .

Read the rest here: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/historians-and-nature/.

Pub: HISTORY AND THEORY 49 (May 2010).

• Berel Lang, "Six Questions on (or about) Holocaust Denial" (available free here: http://www.historyandtheory.org/Lang.pdf)
• Hermann Paul, "Who Suffered From the Crisis of Historicism? A Dutch Example"
• Elias Jose Palti, "From Ideas to Concepts to Metaphors: the German Tradition of Intellectual History and the Complex Fabric of Language"
• Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, "Koselleck, Arendt, and the Anthropology of Historical Experiences"
• Jan Plamper, "The History of Emotions: an Interview with William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, and Peter Stearns" (available free here: http://www.historyandtheory.org/Plamper.pdf)

Download the issue here: http://www.historyandtheory.org/archives/may10.html.

"Breaking up Time: Settling the Borders Between the Present, the Past and the Future," Albert Ludwigs Universität Freiburg, April 7–9, 2011.

Sponsored by Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies and School of History. Since the birth of modernity history has presupposed the existence of ‘the past’ as its object, yet the concept of ‘the past’ and the distinction between the categories of ‘the past’, ‘the present’ and ‘the future’ have seldom been reflected upon within the boundaries of the discipline. Indeed the question of time has largely been omitted from the agenda of history. We feel that it is about time for historians and philosophers of history to start to analyze how cultures in general and historians in particular actually distinguish ‘the past’ from ‘the present’ and ‘the future’, and how their interrelationships are constructed: is distinguishing between past, present and future simply a matter of passively ‘recognizing’ or ‘observing’, what is ‘natural’ and ‘undeniable’, or does it involve a more active stance in which social actors create and recreate these divisions? Can we claim to know precisely how ‘present’ social and cultural phenomena turn into (or come to be perceived/recognized as) past phenomena? It seems worthwhile to make a connection between the historical and the philosophical debates about the temporal distinctions between ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’. What have so far been lacking are comparative analyses of the variety of ways in which historians and historical actors have been breaking up time in practice. Both historians and philosophers have emphasized the role played by catastrophic political ruptures, for example revolutions and major wars, in ‘breaking up time’. However, the effects of these ‘transformative events’ on notions of temporality have hardly been studied in a comparative perspective and as ‘performative’ events. ‘Year 1’ in the French Revolution and ‘Stunde Null’ in post-1945 Germany probably are two of the most well known examples of this type of event in ‘the past’, but the end of the Cold War in 1990 may be considered as the most ‘epoch making’ event in ‘the present’. The workshop solicits papers which focus on (preferably two) ‘transformative events’ and compare the ways in which they have recalibrated thinking about the relationship between the ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’. The temporal framework of the workshop covers classical and high modernity, that is: from 1789 until today. As to the spatial framework the workshop is subdivided in three clusters: 1. Europe; 2. Europe and its colonies; 3.Europe and non-colonial ‘outer-Europe’. Please send proposals of maximum 500 words before 15 September 2010 to Chris Lorenz (chris.lorenz@frias.uni-freiburg.de) and Berber Bevernage (berber.bevernage@ugent.be). You will be notified about the acceptance of your contribution and the preliminary program in early November 2010.FRIAS will reimburse accommodation and travel costs of the participants. Papers submitted to the workshop will be considered for publication. Confirmed participants include: Lynn Hunt (University of California, Los Angeles) François Hartog (École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris) Constantin Fasolt (University of Chicago) Sebastian Conrad (European University Institute, Florence) Peter Osborne (Middlesex University, London) Aziz Al-Azmeh (Central European University, Budapest) Lucian Hölscher (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) Peter Fritzsche (University of Illinois) For more information see website: http://www.frias.uni-freiburg.de/history/veranstaltungen/PresentPastFuture

Pub: HISTORY AND THEORY (February 2010).

The issue contains the first of what will be a yearly entry, namely, the publication of the annual History and Theory Lecture. This lecture is jointly sponsored by History and Theory and by the Consortium for Intellectual and Cultural History centered at Columbia University in New York City. The first lecture was given on March 5, 2009 by Carlo Ginzburg to a large and appreciative audience; it is entitled, "The Letter Kills: On Some Implications of 2 Corinthians 3:6." It offers a rich history and analysis of the idea of a literal reading of a text and of issues about interpretation that arise from this idea. (The Corinthian verse contains the famous "for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.") In addition to Ginzburg's lecture the issue also contains four articles that show the range of current questions in the theory and philosophy of history:

• Eelco Runia, "Into Cleanness Leaping: the Vertiginous Urge to Commit History"
• Jari Kaukua and Vili Lähteenmäki, "Subjectivity as a Non-Textual Standard of Interpretation in the History of Philosophical Psychology"
• Simon T. Kaye, "Challenging Certainty: the Utility and History of Counterfactualism"
• Zhang Longxi, "The True Face of Mount Lu: On the Significance of Perspectives and Paradigms"

Review Essays:

• Michael S. Roth on Georges Didi-Huberman, Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz, and Michael Fried, Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before
• Matt K. Matsuda on Vera Schwarcz, Place and Memory in the Singing Crane Garden
• Rik Peters on David D. Roberts, Historicism and Fascism in Modern Italy
• Stephen Bann on Jean-Louis Schefer, L'Hostie profanée: Histoire d'une fiction théologique (Broché)
• David Carrier on Lydia Goehr, Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory
• Joan W. Scott on Stanley Fish, Save the World on Your Own Time

Click here to read abstracts of these articles: http://www.historyandtheory.org/archives/feb10.html To download a free copy of Eelco Runia's "Into Cleanness Leaping: The Vertiginous Urge to Commit History," please click here: http://www.historyandtheory.org/freearticle.html

21st International Congress of Historical Sciences, University of Amsterdam, August 22-28, 2010.

The next congress of the International Committee of Historical Sciences (ICHS) will be jointly organized by four organizations:

• the Netherlands National Committee: Koninklijk Nederlands Historisch Genootschap (KNHG)
• Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA)
• Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB)
• International Institute of Social History (IISH).

The International Congress of Historical Sciences takes place every five years. This Congress provides an ideal venue for extensive reports, papers, debates, exchanges, and meetings reflecting historical research in action. It is the meeting place for the global community of historians. In recent years the Congress has been held in Madrid (1990), Montreal (1995), Oslo (2000), and Sydney (2005). Visit the conference website here: http://www.ichs2010.org/.

Pub: PHOTOGRAPHY AND HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION. HISTORY AND THEORY 48 (2009).

• Introduction: "Entwined Practices: Engagements with Photography in Historical Inquiry" by JENNIFER TUCKER in collaboration with TINA CAMPT
• "Incongruous Images: 'Before, During, and After' the Holocaust by MARIANNE HIRSCH and LEO SPITZER
• "Seeing and Saying: a Response to 'Incongruous Images'" by GEOFFREY BATCHEN
• "Santu Mofokeng, Photographs: 'The Violence is in the Knowing'" by PATRICIA HAYES
• "Of Fish, Birds, Cats, Mice, Spiders, Flies, Pigs, and Chimpanzees: How Chance Casts the Historic Action Photograph into Doubt" by ROBIN KELSEY
• "Neither Fish nor Flesh" by JOHN TAGG
• "Photographic Ambivalence and Historical Consciousness" by MICHAEL S. ROTH
• "'When I Was a Photographer': Nadar and History" by STEPHEN BANN
• "Photography and the Practices of Critical Black Memory" by LEIGH RAIFORD
• "Photography and the Material Performance of the Past" by ELIZABETH EDWARDS
• "The Evidence of Sight" by JULIA ADENEY THOMAS

Download the issue here: http://www.historyandtheory.org/archives/dec09.html.

"Philosophical Dimensions of Historiographical Discourse," Department of Philosophy, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland, February 19, 2020.

The Department of Philosophy, Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznań , Poland) and the Poznań Chapter of the Polish Philosophical Society invite all for discussion of the book of Chris Lorenz, Bordercrossing: Explorations between Philosophy and History and Historiography. Participants include: Hayden White (University of California in Santa Cruz) Aviezer Tucker (CEVRO Institute, Prague & the Gvirtzman Foundation) Monika Bobako (Adam Mickiewicz University) Krzysztof Brzechczyn (Adam Mickiewicz University) Ewa Domańska (Adam Mickiewicz University) Juliusz Iwanicki (Adam Mickiewicz University) Rafał Wierzchosławski (Catholic University of Lublin) Krzysztof Zamorski (Jagiellonian University, Kraków) and Chris Lorenz (Free University Amsterdam). Discussion will be held in a conference room in Jowita Hotel at Adam Mickiewicz University, Zwierzyniecka Street 7, Poznań on February 19, 2010 (from 10 a .m. to 2 p.m.). Contact: Krzysztof Brzechczyn (brzech@amu.edu.pl).

Pub: HISTORY AND THEORY 48 (2009).

The October 2009 issue of History and Theory has recently been published. In it Andrew Curran, in “Rethinking Race History: The Role of the Albino in the French Enlightenment Life Sciences,” discerningly explores the way the concept of “race” evolved in the eighteenth century and beyond by exploring a category that called into question standard racial categories: the albino or the nègre blanc—quite literally a “white negro.” Curran’s essay deepens our understanding not only of a key concept in history-writing, but also of the way concepts change over time. Also in the issue, Branko Mitrovi?’s “Intentionalism, Intentionality, and Reporting Beliefs” provides an analytically rigorous exploration of the question: when historians report the beliefs of historical figures, do they report the sentences (which are obviously language-dependent) or the propositions (which are language-independent thought-contents) that these historical figures believed to be true or false? (Mitrovi? claims it is the latter.) This topic might seem somewhat far from the practice of history until one realizes that virtually all histories ascribe beliefs to agents in the past, and that what is involved in such ascription is absolutely central to the entire historical enterprise. The issue also contains an especially illuminating Forum that examines Saul Friedländer’s recent Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Extermination. This book offers a brilliant new literary mode for the historical representation of extreme events such as the Holocaust. The forum explores the nature and significance of this new mode in three essays: Alon Confino, “Narrative Form and Historical Sensation: On Saul Friedländer’s The Years of Extermination;” Amos Goldberg, “The Victim’s Voice and Melodramatic Aesthetics in History;” and Christopher R. Browning, “Evocation, Analysis, and the ‘Crisis of Liberalism.’” The result is an exceptionally rich examination of a work that is already a classic of modern history, and a perceptive drawing out of the implications of this work for future historians not only of the Holocaust and other traumatic events, but for history more generally. The issue also includes these review essays: Mary R. Lefkowitz, “A Herodotus for Our Time,” a review of Robert Strassler, ed., The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories John E. Toews, “Manifesting, Producing, and Mobilizing Historical Consciousness in the ‘Postmodern Condition’,” a review of Keith Jenkins, Sue Morgan, and Alun Munslow, eds., Manifestos for History Javed Majeed, “British Colonialism in India as a Pedagogical Enterprise,” a review of Sanjay Seth, Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India, and Michael S. Dodson, Orientalism, Empire, and National Culture: India 1770–1880 Mark S. Cladis, “The Discovery and Recovery of Time in History and Religion,” a review of William Gallois, Time, Religion and History. Click here to read abstracts of the articles in this issue: http://www.historyandtheory.org/archives/oct09.html To download a free copy of Alon Confino, “Narrative Form and Historical Sensation: On Saul Friedländer’s The Years of Extermination,” please click here: http://www.historyandtheory.org/freearticle.html

Cfp: "The Transfiguration of the Present: Reflections on Historical Distance," Centre for Metahistory, University of Groningen, January 28-29, 2010.

The distinction between past and present is a neglected problem in the theory of history. How does the present present transform into a past present? Is contemporary history a contradictio in terminis? Why can’t we make our Zeitgeist visible? What kind of historical estrangement is needed for achieving ‘distance’? What does ‘historical distance’ mean in the first place? The relevance of the work of Frank Ankersmit to the answering of these questions will be discussed during an international conference at Groningen (Netherlands) by a variety of well-known speakers, including Mark Bevir, Hans Kellner, Jörn Rüsen, Aviezer Tucker, and John H. Zammito. Please register before December 15, 2009 by e-mail to m.r.b.wubbolts@rug.nl. Further information can be found on: http://www.rug.nl/let/onderzoek/onderzoekinstituten/icog/tekstenActiviteitenKalender/2010_01_28-29_Transfiguration?lang=en.

Pub: Kansteiner, Wulf, and Christoph Classen, eds. HISTORICAL REPRESENTATION AND HISTORICAL TRUTH. HISTORY AND THEORY (May 2009).

The May 2009 issue of History and Theory is the postponed (from December 2008) Theme Issue 47 on Historical Representation and Historical Truth, edited by Wulf Kansteiner and Christoph Classen. The issue explores the ways various non-standard modes of representing historical events (such as films, museum exhibits, novels, photographs, historical video games, and a non-standard history book) can succeed (or not) in revealing what these events were, and the ways these modes enrich the notion of historical truth. The Issue is particularly mind-opening in expanding the possibilities for doing history and for representing past events. It contains the following articles:

• CHRISTOPH CLASSEN and WULF KANSTEINER, "Truth and Authenticity in Contemporary Historical Culture: an Introduction to Historical Representation and Historical Truth"
• ANN RIGNEY, "All This Happened, More or Less: What a Novelist Made of the Bombing of Dresden"
• WULF KANSTEINER, "Success, Truth, and Modernism in Holocaust Historiography: Reading Saul Friedländer Thirty-Five Years after the Publication of Metahistory"
• JUDITH KEILBACH, "Photographs, Symbolic Images, and the Holocaust: On the (Im)possibility of Depicting Historical Truth"
• CHRISTOPH CLASSEN, "Balanced Truth: Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List among History, Memory, and Popular Culture"
• CLAUDIO FOGU, "Digitalizing Historical Consciousness"
• BETTINA M. CARBONELL, "The Syntax of Objects and the Representation of History: Speaking of Slavery in New York"

Click here to read abstracts of the articles in this issue: http://www.historyandtheory.org/archives/may09.html; to download a free copy of Classen’s and Kansteiner’s Introduction or of Fogu’s essay about what digitalization is doing to historical consciousness, please click here: http://www.historyandtheory.org/freearticle.html. To read the full issue, a subscription is required.

Pub: HISTORY AND THEORY 48.2 (2009).

Original Articles:

• PP. 1-4 "TRUTH AND AUTHENTICITY IN CONTEMPORARY HISTORICAL CULTURE: AN INTRODUCTION TO HISTORICAL REPRESENTATION AND HISTORICAL TRUTH" by CHRISTOPH CLASSEN, WULF KANSTEINER DOI 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2009.00495.x
• PP. 5-24 "ALL THIS HAPPENED, MORE OR LESS: WHAT A NOVELIST MADE OF THE BOMBING OF DRESDEN" by ANN RIGNEY DOI 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2009.00496.x
• PP. 25-53 "SUCCESS, TRUTH, AND MODERNISM IN HOLOCAUST HISTORIOGRAPHY: READING SAUL FRIEDLÄNDER THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER THE PUBLICATION OF METAHISTORY" by WULF KANSTEINER DOI 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2009.00497.x
• PP. 54-76 "PHOTOGRAPHS, SYMBOLIC IMAGES, AND THE HOLOCAUST: ON THE (IM)POSSIBILITY OF DEPICTING HISTORICAL TRUTH" by JUDITH KEILBACH DOI 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2009.00498.x
• PP. 77-102 "BALANCED TRUTH: STEVEN SPIELBERG'S SCHINDLER'S LIST AMONG HISTORY, MEMORY, AND POPULAR CULTURE" by CHRISTOPH CLASSEN DOI 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2009.00499.x
• PP. 103-121 "DIGITALIZING HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS" by CLAUDIO FOGU DOI 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2009.00500.x
• PP. 122-137 "THE SYNTAX OF OBJECTS AND THE REPRESENTATION OF HISTORY: SPEAKING OF SLAVERY IN NEW YORK" by BETTINA M. CARBONELL DOI 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2009.00501.x

Subscribers may download the current issue here: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118501930/home.

Spiegel, Gabrielle M. "The Task of the Historian." AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 114.1 (2009): 1-15.

Traditionally, for historians, the ethical core of our professional commitment has been a belief that our arduous, often tedious labor yields some authentic knowledge of the dead “other,” a knowledge admittedly shaped by the historian's own perceptions and biases, but nonetheless retaining a degree of autonomy, in the sense that it cannot be made entirely to bend to the historian's will. This founding belief in the irreducible otherness of the past conferred on history its proper function, which was to recover that past in as close an approximation of “how it actually was” as possible. In the interest of preserving the autonomy of the past, the historian practiced modesty as a supreme ethical virtue, discreetly holding in abeyance his or her own beliefs, prejudices, and presuppositions. Yet this traditional understanding of the nature, epistemological grounding, truth‐value, and goals of historical research faced a significant challenge beginning in the late 1960s and the 1970s with the emergence of what came to be known as the “linguistic turn,” the belief that language is the constitutive agent of human consciousness and the social production of meaning, and that our apprehension of the world, both past and present, arrives only through the lens of language's precoded perceptions. Moreover, language, once understood as a relatively neutral medium of communication, sufficiently transparent to convey a reasonably accurate sense of reality, itself had been reconceptualized with the emergence of structural linguistics or semiotics, a movement that began with the publication in 1916 of Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics. Far from reflecting the social world of which it is a part, language, Saussure argued, precedes the world and makes it intelligible according to its own rules of signification. Since for Saussure such rules are inherently arbitrary, in the sense of being social conventions implicitly understood in different ways by differing linguistic communities, the idea of an objective universe existing independently of speech and universally comprehensible despite one's membership in any particular language system is an illusion. Such was the “semiotic challenge” posed to the practice of historiography by the rise of structural linguistics and continuing with the successive emergence of structuralism, semiotics, and poststructuralism, including the elaboration of deconstruction. The principal impact of these cognate developments was felt most intensely in the period after World War II; after 1965 they assumed the name “linguistic turn,” a term disseminated by the pragmatic philosopher Richard Rorty in his essay “Metaphysical Difficulties of Linguistic Philosophy” and generalized to various disciplines throughout the course of the seventies and after. Whether or not the linguistic turn constituted the kind of epistemological crisis for historiography that several of my predecessors in this office believed, it is clear that it represented a massive change in our understanding of the nature of historical reality, the methods of research we deployed in seeking to recover the past, and the nature of the truth claims that could be asserted about the product of our labors. Never entirely accepted in the full range of its claims, it nonetheless had a significant impact on how historians construed their basic tasks and the procedures and language in which they were conducted. Anyone who has lived through the last four decades of change in historiographical praxis can appreciate the need to investigate how such a profound transformation in the nature and understanding of historical work, both in practice and in theory, could have taken place. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/ahr.114.1.1?cookieSet=1.

Pub: HISTORY AND THEORY 48 (February 2009).

Articles:

• STEVEN G. SMITH, "Historical Meaningfulness in Shared Action" abstract Wiley InterScience
• ANTOON DE BAETS, "The Impact of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the Study of History" abstract Wiley InterScience
• MARK THURNER, "The Founding Abyss of Colonial History: Or 'The Origin and Principle of the Name of Peru'” abstract Wiley InterScience

Interview:

• ERLEND ROGNE, "The Aim of Interpretation is to Create Perplexity in the Face of the Real: Hayden White in Conversation with Erlend Rogne" Wiley InterScience [downloadable for free here: http://www.historyandtheory.org/freearticle.html]

Review Essays:

• MARTIN JAY on Charles Taylor, A Secular Age Wiley InterScience A Secular Age
• LLOYD KRAMER on Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey Wiley InterScience Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey
• NOËL BONNEUIL on David J. Staley, History and Future: Using Historical Thinking to Imagine the Future Wiley InterScience History and Future: Using Historical Thinking to Imagine the Future
• JAMES CRACRAFT on Martin Malia, History’s Locomotives: Revolutions and the Making of the Modern World Wiley InterScience History' s Locomotives: Revolutions and Making of the Modern World
• MICHAEL PRINTY on Annabel Brett and James Tully, ed., Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought, and on D. N. DeLuna, ed., The Political Imagination in History: Essays Concerning J. G. A. Pocock The Political Imagination in History: Essays concerning J.G.A. Pocock Wiley InterScience
• GEORG G. IGGERS on Jörn Rüsen, ed., Meaning and Representation in History Wiley InterScience Meaning and Representation in History
• GIUSEPPINA D'ORO on Karsten R. Stueber, Rediscovering Empathy: Agency, Folk Psychology, and the Human Sciences Rediscovering Empathy: Agency, Folk Psychology, and the Human Sciences (Bradford Books)
• DAVID KONSTAN on Salvatore Settis, The Future of the 'Classical' Wiley InterScience The Future of the Classical

Visit the journal homepage here: http://www.historyandtheory.org/index.html.

"Appropriating the Past: the Uses and Abuses of Cultural Heritage," Centre for the Ethics of Cultural Heritage, Durham University, July 6-8, 2009.

This two-day conference should be of wide appeal to archaeologists, anthropologists, philosophers, lawyers and others with an interest in the ethical principles and problems associated with the concept of cultural heritage. The meeting will open with four invited lectures to introduce the conference theme and relate it to the specific aims and methods of the new Centre. In recent years, the right of archaeologists to erect ‘Keep Out' signs around what they conceive of as the archaeological record has come under increasing challenge from other interest groups which may assert equal or superior rights to access, utilise and manage those remains, or to determine their significance. So a decorated bronze vessel which for an archaeologist is primarily a source of information to be extracted by academically approved methods may be, to other eyes, a sacred or tabooed object, an anchor of social or cultural identity, a work of art, or a legitimate source of hard cash. These different perceptions correspond to different forms of appropriating the past, and they can give rise to sharp practical conflicts. This conference will explore some of the key ethical issues raised by the competing modes in which archaeologists and others appropriate the past. These include: rights to interpret the past and tell stories about it; handling the sacred; the concept and ethics of birthright; local versus national versus international rights over sites, antiquities and artefacts; roles and responsibilities of museums; duties/rights of international intervention to defend antiquities; study and custodianship of human remains; looting and the antiquities trade; the economic exploitation of sites and resources; duties of preservation for future generations; the use of destructive research techniques; the roles of codes of ethics and of legal frameworks. Keynote Speakers: Professor James O. Young (Philosophy, University of Victoria, Canada) Professor Robert Layton (Anthropology, Durham University, UK) Dr John Curtis OBE (Keeper, Dept. of Middle East, British Museum, UK) Ms Janet Ulph (Law, Durham University, UK). Visit the conference homepage here: http://www.dur.ac.uk/cech/conferences/appropriatingthepast/.

Lukacs, John. "Putting Man Before Descartes." THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR (Winter 2009).

Now, near the end of my career as a historian, I have a truth to tell. So, for 15 minutes, please bear with me. I was still very young when I saw that historians, or indeed scholars and scientists and human beings of all kinds, are not objective. Many who wished to impress the world thought that they were objective. And there are still many historians and even more scientists of that kind, men with gray ice on their faces. But isn’t objectivity an ideal? No: because the purpose of human knowledge—indeed, of human life itself—is not accuracy, and not even certainty; it is understanding. . . . History involves the knowledge of human beings of other human beings. This knowledge differs from other kinds, since human beings are the most complex organisms in the entire universe. The ideal of objectivity is the antiseptic separation of the knower from the known. Understanding involves an approach to bring the two closer. But there is, there can be, no essential separation of the knower from the known. . . . Knowledge, which is neither objective nor subjective, is always personal. Not individual: personal. The concept of the individual has been one of the essential misconceptions of political liberalism. Every human being is unique, but he does not exist alone. He is dependent on others (a human baby for much longer than the offspring of other animals); his existence is inseparable from his relations with other human beings. But there is more to that. Our knowledge is not only personal; it is also participant. There is—yet there cannot be—a separation of the knower from the known. We must see further than this. It is not enough to recognize the impossibility (perhaps even the absurdity) of the ideal of their antiseptic, objective separation. What concerns—or should concern—us is something more than the inseparability; it is the involvement of the knower with the known. That this is so when it comes to the reading, researching, writing, and thinking of history should be rather obvious. Detachment from one’s passions and memories is often commendable. But detachment, too, is something different from separation; it involves the ability (issuing from one’s willingness) to achieve a stance of a longer or higher perspective. The choice for such a stance does not necessarily mean a reduction of one’s personal interest, of participation—perhaps even the contrary. This inevitable involvement of the knower with the known exists not only in the relations of human beings with other human beings, but also in what we call “science,” man’s knowledge of physical things, of nature, of matter. I shall come to this later. Before that, a few words about the relationship of mind and matter. Did—does—matter exist independent of the human mind? It did and it does; but, without the human mind, matter’s existence is meaningless—indeed, without the human mind, we cannot think of its existence at all. In this sense it may even be argued that mind preceded and may precede matter (or what we see and then call “matter”). . . . Our thinking of the world, our imagination (and we imagine and see together) anthropomorphizes and humanizes everything, even inanimate things, just as our exploration of the universe is inevitably geocentric. “Know Thyself” is the necessary fundament of our understanding of other human beings, but we can never go wholly outside of ourselves, just as we can never go outside the universe to see it. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/putting-man-before-descartes/.

Two Upcoming Events Organised by the Consortium for Intellectual and Cultural History.

A) "The Letter Kills: On Some Implications of 2 Corinthians 3:6," Inaugural History & Theory Lecture by Carlo Ginzburg, Thursday, March 5, 2009, 6:15 pm, Davis Auditorium, Schapiro Center; Comments by Matthew L. Jones, Columbia University. (Co-sponsored by the Heyman Center for the Humanities, Department of History, and the European Institute)

B) "Historicizing Humanitarianism: Ideas, Culture, and Politics," Organized by the Columbia Center for International History and Co-sponsored by the Consortium for Intellectual and Cultural History, Friday, April 3, 2009

9 Coffee

9:15 Welcome: Mark Mazower (Columbia)

Morning: Inventing Humanitarianism in the 18th and 19th Centuries Chair: Samuel Moyn (Columbia)

Session One: Origins and Narratives 9:30 Lynn Festa (Rutgers) 10 Thomas Laqueur (Berkeley) 10:30 Discussion

Session Two: Antislavery and Moral Capital 10:45 Thomas Haskell (Rice) 11:15 Christopher Leslie Brown (Columbia) 11:45 Discussion

12 Lunch

Afternoon: The Practice of Humanitarianism in the 20th Century Chair: Jennifer Pitts (Chicago)

Session Three: Humanitarianism and the International Order 2 Jeanne Morefield (Whitman) 2:30 Mark Mazower (Columbia) 3 Discussion

Session Four: Contemporary Humanitarianism: Metropole and Postcolony 3:15 Miriam Ticktin (New School) 3:45 Gregory Mann (Columbia) 4:15 Discussion

For further information, visit: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cich/index.html.

Thomann, Bernard. "History and Globalisation." LA VIE DES IDEES January 5, 2009.

In the age of globalisation, how can one write an open history of the world, of its exchanges, movements, and encounters? A recent issue of the Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine gave a broad overview of the questions raised by “global history” and once more underlined the provincialism of French universities. . . . Download the article here: http://www.laviedesidees.fr/History-and-Globalisation.html.