old perrennials:

 

historiography and the history of history

 

 

Some of the regular participants in the historiography seminar. [26/11/08]

 

autumn semester 2008

 

 

A seminar series, led by Dr. Elaine Sisson, rooted in the question of cultural historical writing which attends to the kinds of challenges presented by hostorical researches rooted in attending to cultural practice within broadly interdisciplinary enquiries. (For more on the origins of this seminar series see the information on the Spring semester here.) We will be basing the Seminar this semester on one key text: The Routledge Modern Historiography Reader (2008) edited by Adam Budd. It includes a number of primary texts, each with an introduction situating it within discourses on historiography. However, the book is not in print until November. The following readings for October have been decided:

 

 

spring semester 2009

 

  • Initial meeting Wed 21st January at 2.30

    Foucault’s The Order of Things – 2 sections - one On Speaking and one On Classifying. The On Speaking section was seen to be less important than the section on Classifying so we’ve agreed to concentrate more on the latter. Also, as we might end up staying in a Foucault shaped cave forever we have also agreed to read an article from our NEW text in tandem with the Foucault.

    As the Classifying section from the Foucault text addresses the task of the historian, Sorcha suggests that in the new book we look at Becker’s “Everyman his own Historian” in the section on “The Historian’s Task” because it (in her words) “champions the imaginative basis of history writing over the scientific school of history writing.” That sounds good enough to me! Sorcha also suggests that for the following session we might look at Part 6 of the reader on the approach of social science and the differing methods of Durkheim and Weber vs Mill and Marx as a natural follow through– so bear in mind for January’s session. Fiona has informed me that a copy of the Historiography reader has been ordered for the NCAD library and Thomas rang me today to let me know that there are 8 copies of the Reader for us in Hodges Figgis on Dawson Street. It’s about 33 euro which is not cheap but it is a weighty tome and a substantial resource. The full title is Adam Budd (2008) The Modern Historiography Reader, Routledge.

     

  • Weds 4/2/09

    For Wednesday 4 Feb

    Part Six:
    Mill, JS (1843), The Historical Method, TMHR, pp. 207-213.

    Marx, K + Engels, F (1845) Premises of the Materialist Conception of History, TMHR, pp. 214-18.

    Durkheim, E (1902) History, Function and Cause, TMHR, pp. 219-220.

    Dilthey, W (1923) Human Life, TMHR, p. 221.
    --- (1910) Construction of the Historical World, TMHR, pp. 222-3.

    Weber, M (1922), On the Concept of Sociology and the "Meaning" of Social Conduct, TMHR, pp. 227-32.

    as well as:
    Bloch, M (1941), Introduction to The Historian's Craft, TMHR, pp. 30-4.
    Bloch, M + Febvre, L (1929), Preface: To Our Readers, TMHR, pp. 188-9.

    and:
    Exchanging (Part Six) from The Order of Things

  • Weds 18/2/09

    The historiography seminar group hosts aspecial keynote lecture (speaking matters # 9) by Dr. Marc Caball.

    'Antiquarian to Academic: Changing patterns of knowledge creation & dissemination in 19th-century Ireland'

    Wednesday 18/2/09 14:30-15:30

    Dr. Marc Caball Director of the Humanities Institute Ireland and the Graduate School of Arts & Celtic Studies, UCD, will deliver a keynote lecture as part of our continuing programme of work on historiographical issues and the writing of cultural history. The seminar series 'old perennials: historiography and the history of history' will host an annual keynote lecture by a leading expert in historical researches. The Graduate School is especially pleased to welcome Dr. Marc Caball to deliver the first of these annual keynote lectures.

    John's Street, Dublin.

    Find out more...

     

  • Weds 4/3/09

    Michel Foucault "The Limits of Representation" from The Order of Things (235-264)

    Mark Salber Philips "Relocating Inwardness: Historical distance and the transition from Enlightenment to Romantic Historiography" (106-118)

     

  • Weds 18/3/09

     

  • We may schedule some more seminars during Easter break dependingon the group's availability.

  • Fri 17/4/09

    'Military Aesthetics and Khaki contracts: the making of the First World War civilian soldier'

    Friday 17/4/09 14:00

    Speaking Matters #13: Guest Lecturer: Jane Tynan.

    Jane Tynan is a cultural studies lecturer at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London who recently completed her Phd thesis on First World War British army uniform. This seminar sets out her approach to the research project which involved integrating a range of methods and sources. Cross-currents between official and popular representations offered an opportunity to consider the ideological and material construction of the wartime body. She used the work of Michel Foucault to consider how uniform became part of a popular culture that designed the civilian body for war.

     

  • Weds 22/4/09

     

  • Weds 6/5/09

     

 

 

autumn semester 2008

 

  • Weds 17/9/08
    Review of initiation and progress of seminar in Spring Semester.

  • Weds 1/10/08
    This week's seminar focuses on The Annales Group in France. There are three essays which describe, critique and situate the emergence of the Annales Historians in the 1920s within contemporary historiography.

    The three readings are:

    Georg Iggers (1997) "France; The Annales" from Historiography in the Twentieth Century. Connecticut, Wesleyan University Press.

    George Huppert (1997)"The Annales Experiment" from Companion to Historiography. London & New York, Routledge

    Ernst Breisach (1992) "The Annales Group" from Historiography: Ancient Medieval and Modern. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.


  • Weds 15/10/08
    The readings for Oct 15 (included in the photocopies in circulation) originally appeared in a classic text edited by Le Goff and Nora - Constructing the Past - featuring some of the Annales historians whose work anticipates the predominance of social science methodologies in the 1960s and 1970s. The new edition containing the texts is introduced by Colin Lucas. The four readings are:

    Colin Lucas "Introduction"
    Francois Furet "Quantitative Methods in History"
    Andre Burguiere "Demography"
    Roger Chartier and Daniel Roche "New Approaches to the History of the Book"

    Report: The chosen readings were taken specifically from works by historians associated with the Annales. The readings provided examples of how the rigorous inter-disciplinary methodologies employed by the Annales were able to illuminate apparently dry statistical and quantitative material. Discussion centred around the process of research, the use of documents to illicit additional information (for example an examination of bequests and wills to determine literacy and reading patterns), and the painstaking need to pay attention to detail when deciphering historical and archival material whilst being continually aware of cultural contingencies. As an historical mode of thought which eschewed the privileging of “event” in history and instead drew attention to process and context, a discussion developed around the difference of the significance of the “evental moment” in historical and philosophical discourse. It is a relationship which we might return to at a later date – possibly in conjunction with the Event seminar.



  • Weds 29/10/08
    After looking at the Annales historians’ methodological approach we decided we would like to look more closely at some philosophical debates around the construction of archival material and historical analysis.

    F. Gerald Ham (1975) "The Archival Edge," American Archivist 38. January.
    Fernand Braudel, (1963 trans. 1993). The History of Civilisations. Harmondsworth: Allen Lane, Penguin Press: 15-21.
    Walter Benjamin, (1968) "Theses on the Philosophy of History." Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. New York: Schocken Books.

  • Weds 12/11/08
    Readings are available if you email elaine.sisson@gradcam.ie:

    Steven Ungar. (1992) "Against Forgetting: Notes on Revision and the Writing of History." Diacritics 22.2 (Summer): 62-69
    Pierre Nora, (1989). "Between Memory and History." Representations. No 26. Special Issue on Memory and Counter-Memory. (Spring): 7-24
    Manuel DeLanda . (2003) "The Archive Before and After Foucault"
    Thomas Osborne. (1999) "The Ordinariness of the Archive." History of the Human Sciences. Vol. 12. No 2: 51-64

    Precis: This week's Historiography seminar looked at a number of texts primarily concerned with the construction of memory and the role or place of the archive. Pierre Nora's article on Sites of Memory gave rise to a discussion about the differentiation he draws between sites of memory and sites of history. In particular we talked about the relationship between specific sites where memory/events are commemorated (public statues etc) and addressed the question as to the relationship between permanent referents (ie statues) and intangible dispersed events (i.e the Famine). In a week where "Remembrance" featured highly in the popular consciousness the corresponding absence of any systematic commemorative culture around the Famine (as opposed to the WWI or WWII for example) was noted (where is the commemorative site of the Famine; where is the minute's silence or other such commemorative apparatus?)Do different types of historical events give rise to different commemorative forms?

  • Weds 26/11/08
    People felt that a systematic, close reading of a Foucault text would be useful - not only in coming to grips with the influence of his ideas but also as a means of tackling a text about history which doesn't employ standard historical methodologies.

    It was agreed that we would look at Foucault's The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences.
    Two readings from Part I:
    1. Las Meninas - which is a close reading of the Velazquez painting
    2. The Prose of the World (parts I-IV)
    If you do not already own a copy I would suggest buying the Routledge Classic edition (2002) so that we can work from similar editions

  • Weds 10/12/08
    Following our initial foray into the work of Foucault we are continuing our
    journey into The Order of Things. The reading for next Wed is Chapter 3 (Parts
    I-IV) "Representing." It was agreed that Foucault requires close reading and
    that it is counter-productive to set too much reading for one session.



seminar initiation in spring semester 2008

 

This seminar began as an attempt to address the recurrent questions of 'objectivity' encountered in the writing of history. The seminar thus sought to address the construction of an 'objectivity' problem within historiography by looking at:
(i) the emergence of the discipline of history;
(ii) the problematisation of history writing in the late twentieth century;
(iii) the linguistic turn, the literary trope and the writing of history;
(iv) history and causal explanation;
(v) exemplary cases in the writing of history;
(vi) the return of grand-narratives + over-arching explanatory systems?

 

Spring semester participants

 

Clare Bell (Assoc. Researcher at DIT), Katharina Pfuetzner (Assoc. Researcher aT NCAD), Thomas Lewis (Research Scholar at DIT), Sorcha O'Brien (Assoc. Researcher at University of Brighton), Dr. Lisa Godson (Assoc. Fellow at NCAD), Fiona Loughnane (Research Proposal in Development) (Dr. Mick Wilson.

 

Initial Set of Proposed Readings:

 

Breisach, Ernst (1994) Historiography: Ancient, Medieval & Modern, 2nd Ed., University of Chicago Press.

Castel, Robert (1994) '"Problematization" as a mode of reading history', in Goldstein, Jay (ed.) Foucault and the Writing of History, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 235-252

Daston, Lorraine and Peter Galison (2007) Objectivity, New York: Zone Books

Evans, Richard J. (1997) In Defence of History, London: Granta

Gilbert, Felix (1990) History: Politics or Culture? Reflections on Ranke and Burchardt, Princeton University Press.

Haskell, Thomas L. (1998) Objectivity is not Neutrality: Explanatory Schemes in History, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Lambert, Peter and Phillipp Schofield (eds.) (2004) Making History: An introduction to the history and practices of a discipline, New York; Routledge.

Marwick, Arthur (1993) ' "A Fetishism of Documents"?: The Salience of Source-Based History, in Kozicki, Henry (ed.) Developments in Modern Historiography, pp. 107-138.

Marwick, Arthur (2001) The New Nature of History: Knowledge, Evidence, Language, London: Routledge.

McCullagh, C. Behan (1998) The Truth of History, London: Routledge

Novick, Peter (1988) That Noble dream: the "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession, Cambridge University Press.

Ricouer, Paul (2004) Memory, History, Forgetting, University of Chicago Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel (2004) The Uncertainties of knowledge, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

 

 

  • Mon 7/4/08

    The discussion focused on the question of how 'objectivity' has been constructed as an issue for professional historians. Two key moments were posited in the development of the theme of 'objectivity' in historiography: the late-19th C. with the emergence of professionalised academic historians (particular example taken from US ); and the early 1970s with the work of Hayden White and the general tendency identified as a 'linguistic turn' in historiography. (Special note made of Paul de Man's 'history as text' proposition from the early 1970s.) The question of 'persuasiveness' as a criterion for historical writing was also considered. (Persuasiveness was identified as an alternate construction of questions of credibility in historical writing, allowing multiple constructions. The proposition that certain dominant forms were accorded privileged 'persuasiveness' in historical writing was mooted: e.g., explication of historical causation by reference to individual human agency and personal 'character'.)

    Thus the general 'rhetorical' issues that reading and writing historical texts presents were introduced. The proposition was made that the question of objectivity is not itself an 'objective' structure, but a contingent construction addressing historically specific needs. At the same time the question of adjudicating between competing and conflicting historical accounts was broached. Discussion was also given over to the ways in which the actual writing of specific cultural-historical research projects presents questions to the researcher about the value, knowledge-status, and credibility of the account - description and explanation - produced.

    It was agreed to progress the discussion by reviewing competing accounts of a key cultural/technological historical change. This would provide an applied case-study opportunity in analysing how the question of 'objectivity' may be rehearsed in evaluating competing historical accounts. The specific focus of these examples will be the emergence of 'design' as a category of production / produced goods.

    Breisach, Ernst (1994) Historiography: Ancient, Medieval & Modern, 2nd Ed., University of Chicago Press.
    2 Chapters: Late 19th C and Late 20th C

    Haskell, Thomas L. (1998) Objectivity is not Neutrality: Explanatory Schemes in History, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
    1 Chapter on Peter Novick

    Lambert, Peter and Phillipp Schofield (eds.) (2004) Making History: An introduction to the history and practices of a discipline, New York: Routledge.
    2 Chapters: Methodology & Postmodernism

    Novick, Peter (1988) That Noble dream: the "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession, Cambridge University Press.
    2 Chapters: Introduction & Conclusion.

  • Mon 12/5/08

    Three accounts of the emergence of Modernist design:

    Pevsner, Nikolaus (1949 [1936]) Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius, New York: The Museum of Modern Art (Chapters 1, 2 and 7)

    Schaefer, Herwin (1970) The Roots of Modern Design: Functional Tradition in the 19th Century, London: Studio Vista (Introduction and Chapter 7)

    Heskett, John (1980) Industrial Design, New York: Thames and Hudson (Chapter 5)

    A further suggested item is:

    Mazur Thomson, Ellen (1997) The Origins of Graphic Design in America 1870-1920, New Haven & London: Yale.

    16:00-18:00 Seminar Room

 

 

 

 

 

 

For additional information on the collaborating institutions consult www.dit.ie, www.ncad.ie, www.iadt.ie and www.ulster.ac.uk.