'This book caused quite a stir when it appeared in 1991 and has now attained Routledge Classics status ... Jenkins packs a lot into a short space and his explanations of "history theory" are impressively concise.' - The Guardian

'A startlingly clear and thought-provoking introduction to current central debates in history and historiography. It is accessible to history students, students in subjects that draw on historical past and to the general reader. Already, a classic text book.' - Robert Eaglestone, Royal Holloway, University of London

'Far and away the best introduction to the state of the question currently available.' - Hayden White, University of California at Santa Cruz

This book is about history and the practical power of language to reveal historical change. Christopher Ehret offers a methodological guide to applying language evidence in historical studies. He demonstrates how these methods allow us not only to recover the histories of time periods and places poorly served by written documentation, but also to enrich our understanding of well-documented regions and eras. A leading historian as well as historical linguist of Africa, Ehret provides in-depth examples from the language phyla of Africa, arguing that his comprehensive treatment can be applied by linguistically trained historians and historical linguists working with any language and in any area of the world.

Nothing has generated more controversy in the social sciences than the turn toward culture, variously known as the linguistic turn, culturalism, or postmodernism. This book examines the impact of the cultural turn on two prominent social science disciplines, history and sociology, and proposes new directions in the theory and practice of historical research.
The editors provide an introduction analyzing the origins and implications of the cultural turn and its postmodernist critiques of knowledge. Essays by leading historians and historical sociologists reflect on the uses of cultural theories and show both their promise and their limitations. The afterword by Hayden White provides an assessment of the trend toward culturalism by one its most influential proponents.
"Beyond the Cultural Turn" offers fresh theoretical readings of the most persistent issues created by the cultural turn and provocative empirical studies focusing on diverse social practices, the uses of narrative, and the body and self as critical junctures where culture and society intersect.

For Greg Dening, history saturates every moment of our cultural and personal existence. Throughout this text the author shows his awareness that the actual past remains fundamentally irreplicable. He asserts all histories to be culturally crafted artifacts, commensurate with folk tales, stage plays, or films. Whether derived from logbooks and letters, or displayed on music hall stages and Hollywood back lots, history is in essence our making sense of what has and continues to happen, creating for us a sense of our cultural and individual selves.

Modernity is a troubling concept, not only for scholars but for the general public, for it seems to represent a choice between oppressive traditions and empty, rootless freedom. Seeking a broader understanding of modernity, Kolb first considers the views of Weber and then discusses in detail the pivotal writings of Hegel and Heidegger. He uses the novel strategy of presenting Heidegger's critique of Hegel and then suggesting the critique of Heidegger that Hegel might have made.
Kolb offers his own views, proposing the possibility of a meaningful life that is free but still rooted in shared contexts. He concludes with comments on postmodernity as discussed by Lyotard and others, arguing persuasively against the presupposition of a unified Modern or Postmodern Age.

Since ancient times, the pundits have lamented young people's lack of historical knowledge and warned that ignorance of the past surely condemns humanity to repeating its mistakes. In the contemporary United States, this dire outlook drives a contentious debate about what key events, nations, and people are essential for history students. Sam Wineburg says that we are asking the wrong questions. This book demolishes the conventional notion that there is one true history and one best way to teach it. Although most of us think of history -- and learn it -- as a conglomeration of facts, dates, and key figures, for professional historians it is a way of knowing, a method for developing and understanding about the relationships of peoples and events in the past. A cognitive psychologist, Wineburg has been engaged in studying what is intrinsic to historical thinking, how it might be taught, and why most students still adhere to the \u0022one damned thing after another\u0022 concept of history. Whether he is comparing how students and historians interpret documentary evidence or analyzing children's drawings, Wineburg's essays offer \u0022rough maps of how ordinary people think about the past and use it to understand the present.\u0022 Arguing that we all absorb lessons about history in many settings -- in kitchen table conversations, at the movies, or on the world-wide web, for instance -- these essays acknowledge the role of collective memory in filtering what we learn in school and shaping our historical thinking.

"For description and defense of the narrative configurations of everydaylife, and of the practical and social character of those narratives, there is nobetter treatment than Time, Narrative, and History.... a clear, judicious, andtruthful account, provocative from beginning to end." -- Journal of the BritishSociety for Phenomenology

..". a superior work of philosophy thattells a unique and insightful story about narrative." -- Quarterly Journal ofSpeech

A Drag Dynasty is about to be divined from the high life decade of decadence. It is destined, pre-ordained - and perfectly coiffed. Darrin Hagen, under the mentorship of his drag mother, Lulu LaRude, rose to the height of glamour as Gloria Hole, performer extraordinaire at the legendary Flashback nightclub. Beneath the layers of nightlife, stage lights and make-up lay the complex relationships of a chosen family. Both hilarious and moving, "The Edmonton Queen: The Final Voyage" once again invites readers to the exclusive party that was, and should not be missed again.

In World-Systems Analysis, Immanuel Wallerstein provides a concise and accessible introduction to the comprehensive approach that he pioneered thirty years ago to understanding the history and development of the modern world. Since Wallerstein first developed world-systems analysis, it has become a widely utilized methodology within the historical social sciences and a common point of reference in discussions of globalization. Now, for the first time in one volume, Wallerstein offers a succinct summary of world-systems analysis and a clear outline of the modern world-system, describing the structures of knowledge upon which it is based, its mechanisms, and its future.Wallerstein explains the defining characteristics of world-systems analysis: its emphasis on world-systems rather than nation-states, on the need to consider historical processes as they unfold over long periods of time, and on combining within a single analytical framework bodies of knowledge usually viewed as distinct from one another-such as history, political science, economics, and sociology. He describes the world-system as a social reality comprised of interconnected nations, firms, households, classes, and identity groups of all kinds. He identifies and highlights the significance of the key moments in the evolution of the modern world-system: the development of a capitalist world-economy in the sixteenth-century, the beginning of two centuries of liberal centrism in the French Revolution of 1789, and the undermining of that centrism in the global revolts of 1968. Intended for general readers, students, and experienced practitioners alike, this book presents a complete overview of world-systems analysis by its original architect.

Is Byzantine Studies a colonialist discipline? Rather than provide a definitive answer to this question, this book defines the parameters of the debate and proposes ways of thinking about what it would mean to engage seriously with the field’s political and intellectual genealogies, hierarchies, and forms of exclusion. In this volume, scholars of art, history, and literature address the entanglements, past and present, among the academic discipline of Byzantine Studies and the practice and legacies of European colonialism. Starting with the premise that Byzantium and the field of Byzantine studies are simultaneously colonial and colonized, the chapters address topics ranging from the material basis of philological scholarship and its uses in modern politics to the colonial plunder of art and its consequences for curatorial practice in the present. The book concludes with a bibliography that serves as a foundation for a coherent and systematic critical historiography. Bringing together insights from scholars working in different disciplines, regions, and institutions, Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? urges practitioners to reckon with the discipline’s colonialist, imperialist, and white supremacist history. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Andrea Myers Achi, Nathanael Aschenbrenner, Bahattin Bayram, Averil Cameron, Stephanie R. Caruso, Şebnem Dönbekci, Hugh G. Jeffery, Anthony Kaldellis, Matthew Kinloch, Nicholas S. M. Matheou, Maria Mavroudi, Zeynep Olgun, Arietta Papaconstantinou, Jake Ransohoff, Alexandra Vukovich, Elizabeth Dospěl Williams, and Arielle Winnik.

Forgetfulness is a book about modern culture and its profound rejection of the past. It traces the emergence in recent history of the idea that what is important in human life and work is what will happen in the future. Francis O'Gorman asks what the absence of history does to our sense of purpose, as well as what belonging both to time and place might mean in cultures without a memory. It is written in praise of the best achievement and deeds of the past, but is also an expression of profound anxiety about what forgetting them is doing to us.

The decades between 1970 and the end of the twentieth century saw the disciplines of history and anthropology draw closer together, with historians paying more attention to social and cultural factors and the significance of everyday experience in the study of the past. The people, rather than elite actors, became the focus of their inquiry, and anthropological insights into agriculture, kinship, ritual, and folk customs enabled historians to develop richer and more representative narratives. The intersection of these two disciplines also helped scholars reframe the legacies of empire and the roots of colonial knowledge.

In this collection of essays and lectures, history's turn from high politics and formal intellectual history toward ordinary lives and cultural rhythms is vividly reflected in a scholar's intellectual journey to India. Nicholas B. Dirks recounts his early study of kingship in India, the rise of the caste system, the emergence of English imperial interest in controlling markets and India's political regimes, and the development of a crisis in sovereignty that led to an extraordinary nationalist struggle. He shares his personal encounters with archives that provided the sources and boundaries for research on these subjects, ultimately revealing the limits of colonial knowledge and single disciplinary perspectives. Drawing parallels to the way American universities balance the liberal arts and specialized research today, Dirks, who has occupied senior administrative positions and now leads the University of California at Berkeley, encourages scholars to continue to apply multiple approaches to their research and build a more global and ethical archive.

How, as historians, should we 'read' a film? Histories on Screen answers this and other questions in a crucial volume for any history student keen to master source use. The book begins with a theoretical 'Thinking about Film' section that explores the ways in which films can be analyzed and interrogated as either primary sources, secondary sources or indeed as both. The much larger 'Using Film' segment of the book then offers engaging case studies which put this theory into practice. Topics including gender, class, race, war, propaganda, national identity and memory all receive good coverage in what is an eclectic multi-contributor volume. Documentaries, films and television from Britain and the United States are examined and there is a jargon-free emphasis on the skills and methods needed to analyze films in historical study featuring prominently throughout the text. Histories on Screen is a vital resource for all history students as it enables them to understand film as a source and empowers them with the analytical tools needed to use that knowledge in their own work.

Injustices of the past cast a shadow on the present. They are the root cause of much harm, the source of enmity, and increasingly in recent times, the focus of demands for reparation. In this groundbreaking philosophical investigation, Janna Thompson examines the problems raised by reparative demands and puts forward a theory of reparation for historical injustices.

The book argues that the problems posed by historical injustices are best resolved by a reconciliatory view of reparative justice and an approach that explains how people acquire intergenerational responsibilities and entitlements. It ranges in its subject matter from the claims of indigenous people to land stolen from their ancestors to the growing movement for reparations for slavery. The book provides an original and convincing answer to the questions of how citizens can have reparative responsibilities for wrongs committed before they were born, and why descendants of victims may be entitled to compensation for historical injustices such as slavery. It also explains how members of nations can make recompense for injustices of the past without ignoring the inequities of the present."Taking Responsibility for the Past" is a significant contribution to philosophical and legal debates about reparative justice, and at the same time an accessible and thought-provoking book for general readers.

The volume takes a historical approach to examine how biography has been used throughout history. It gives readers a real sense of the history of the relationship between history and biography. Useful for historians and students as it looks at different, emerging Schools of biography in the present day, allowing the complexity of the practice in the present day to be easily understood by the reader. It covers a large range of issues that historians have faced over time when using biography - such as used the problems of evidence, the subject matter, the methodological robustness and inclusiveness of biographical practice, pluralism and non-Western biographical principles and representativeness which allows the reader to get a sense of the wide range of issues that are addressed when thinking about history and biography.

Who is the historian? What do historians do? Where do their explorations take them? What is the impact of the digital age on historical research? In an affable style, Nigel A. Raab answers these questions for those intrigued by the past. Each chapter describes a specific aspect of "doing history," beginning in the physical spaces of archives and libraries around the globe. Readers are then introduced to the sources-texts, oral interviews, films, and objects-which historians interpret. Raab points out that historians do not work alone with their materials; rather, archivists, librarians, and others play a crucial role in what he calls the web of the historian's work. Readers will also learn about the skill set imparted to those pursuing a historical education. In the final chapter, Raab brings all these themes together to demonstrate the value of the historian in the contemporary world.

Thucydides was labelled the 'greatest historian that ever lived' by Macauley and no study of Classical Greece is complete without encountering his history of the Peloponnesian War, the greatest war of Greeks against Greeks in the late fifth century BCE, which ended in the fall of Athens. This concise introductory guide sets Thucydides in context as a Greek historian writing about the Peloponnesian War; as an intellectual in the era of the 'sophists', who were willing to question a variety of traditional assumptions; and as an upper-class Athenian who lived through and was actively involved in the Peloponnesian War as a general. Including a survey and summary of Thucydides' work, P. J. Rhodes explores the principles and practices of historiography which Thucydides originated and implemented throughout his History: his narrative insight, an almost scientific judgment and exposition of sources and prejudices, and a strictly defined and authoritative view of what was required in a history of a war. In addition to examining Thucydides' work, the volume provides an overview of the social, political and intellectual contexts Thucydides was writing in, and looks at his impact in antiquity and beyond, from forming modern concepts of impartial history to his effect on popular culture.

The book is an investigation of the evidence for King Arthur based on the earliest written sources rather than later myths and legends. The evidence is laid out in a chronological order starting from Roman Britain and shows how the legend evolved and at what point concepts such as Camelot, excalibur and Merlin were added. It covers the historical records from the end of Roman Britain using contemporary sources such as they are, from 400-800, including Gallic Chronicles, Gildas and Bede. It details the first written reference to Arthur in the Historia Brittonum c800 and the later Annales Cambriae in the tenth century showing the evolution of the legend in in later Welsh and French stories. The work differs from other books on the subject in not starting from or aiming at a specific person. It compares the possibility of Arthur being purely fictional with an historical figure alongside a list of possible suspects. The evidence is presented and the reader is invited to make up their own mind before a discussion of the Author's own assessment.

This is a book for anyone interested in history, what it is and where it comes from. Engaging and challenging, it confronts us with the many 'histories' that exist and have existed around the world, from the Zulu kingdoms to Communist China. The Use and Abuse of History takes as its starting point the way history is taught to children. The different narratives that constitute the histories of countries as diverse as India, Iran, Trinidad and the United States make for fascinating reading in their own right. What makes this book so valuable, though, is what these narratives tell us about the societies which created them - how much is history distorted in order to condition the minds of those who are taught it? A pioneer in its field that has become a key text of contemporary historiography, this is a book that poses fundamental and disturbing questions about the use and abuse of history.

Antoine de Baecque proposes a new historiography of cinema, exploring film as a visual archive of the twentieth century, as well as history's imprint on the cinematic image. Whether portraying events that occurred in the past or stories unfolding before their eyes, certain twentieth-century filmmakers used a particular mise-en-sc?ne to give form to history, becoming in the process historians themselves. Historical events, in turn, irrupted into cinema. This double movement, which de Baecque terms the "cinematographic form of history," disrupts the very material of film, much like historical events disturb the narrative of human progress.

De Baecque defines, locates, and interprets cinematographic forms in seven distinct bodies of cinema: 1950s modern cinema and its conjuring of the morbid trauma of war; French New Wave and its style, which became the negative imprint of the malaise felt by young contemporaries of the Algerian War; post-Communist Russian films, or the "de-modern" works of "catastroika"; contemporary Hollywood films that attach themselves to the master fiction of 9/11; the characteristic "mise en forme" of filmmaker Sacha Guitry, who, in "Si" "Versailles m'?tait cont? (1954), filmed French history from inside its chateau; the work of Jean-Luc Godard, who evoked history through his own museum memory of the twentieth century; and the achievements of Peter Watkins, the British filmmaker who reported on history like a war correspondent. De Baecque's introduction clearly lays out his theoretical framework, a profoundly brilliant conceptualization of the many ways cinema and history relate."

Intellectual historian Michael S. Roth has spent more than two decades exploring the way we make meaning out of the past. This collection features his most influential essays, in which he uses psychoanalysis to build a richer understanding of history, and then takes a more expansive conception of history to decode the cultural construction of memory.

His collection consists of five sections. The first examines the development in nineteenth-century France of professional criteria for diagnosing memory disorders--criteria that signal fundamental changes in the understanding of present and past. The second section explores links between historical consciousness and issues relating to the psyche, including trauma and repression and hypnosis and therapy. Roth next examines the work of postmodern theorists in light of the philosophy of history. Then he considers photography and its capturing of traces of the past, which propose connection while acknowledging otherness. Roth focuses on piety and how it turns us to the past, or how we strive to be faithful to the past without necessarily getting it right or using it well. Roth concludes with essays on the promises and risks of liberal education, calling for a pragmatic and reflexive approach to thinking and learning. Drawing on his vast experiences as a teacher and academic leader, Roth speaks of living with the past without being dominated by it and of remaining open to the possibility of sharing our lives with others.

What are the ethical responsibilities of the historian in an age of mass murder and hyper-reality? Can one be postmodern and still write history? For whom should history be written? The author explores these questions through the figure of the "heterological historian". Realizing the philosophical impossibilities of ever recovering "what really happened", this historian nevertheless acknowledges a moral imperative to speak for those who have been rendered voiceless. The book also weighs the impact of modern archival methods, such as photographs, film and the Internet, which bring with them new constraints on the writing of history and which mandate a different vision of community. Drawing on the works of continental philosophers, historiographers, cognitive scientists and filmmakers, the book creates a framework for the understanding of history and the ethical duties of the historian.