A reviewer once called Peter Viereck's thought "not common sense but inspired, electric common sense." This volume of Viereck's selected essays on poetry and on history, written between 1938 through 2004, exemplifies this quality. Its main theme is suggested in Viereck's coined phrase "strict wildness," which suggests a balance between restraint (which by itself is staid and rigid) and passion (which by itself is incoherent). Frost called free verse tennis without the net. Viereck calls dead mechanical form "net without the tennis." Strict wildness, then, is spontaneity of feeling within strict organic form. The book explores questions of modernism and poetic craft with respect to American poetry. It discusses the controversy over Ezra Pound's politics and its relation to his poetics, and the nearly forgotten poet Vachel Lindsay. Viereck offers more general views on poetics, including the fruitful tensions between form and content, and the impact of modern technology on poetic expression. This book also discusses history and politics, and contains essays on McCarthyism, the Cold War, political conformity of the Left and Right, and issues of historiography and culture that define Viereck's highly individual, often critical brand of conservatism. In treating representative trends and figures in conservative thought, Viereck insists on clear awareness of what exists to conserve, what ought to be conserved, and why it should be conserved. In their range and originality, the writings brought together in "Strict Wildness" constitute an ideal introduction to Peter Viereck's literary and political thought. It will be of interest to literary scholars, intellectual historians, and political scientists.

First volume of the Natalie Zemon Davis Annual Lecture Series at Central European University, this small but rich book contains three lectures delivered at CEU. Explores some of the ways in which time matters or should matter to historians. Like everyone else, historians assume that time exists, yet despite its obvious importance to historical writing--what is history but the account of how things change over time?--writers of history do not often inquire into the meaning of time itself. Hunt asks a series of related questions about time in history. Why is time now again on the agenda, for historians and more generally in Western culture? How did Western Christian culture develop its distinctive way of measuring time (BC/AD or BCE/CE) and how does it influence our notion of history? What is the role of modernity--our most contentious temporal category--in the historical discipline? Is modernity an experience of temporal ty or an ideological construction? Are modernity, the discipline of history, and even the notion of history itself a western, and therefore imperialist, imposition? Should we, can we, move beyond the modern within the historical discipline?

This volume compares the writing of national histories in relation to the histories of ethnicity/race, class, religion and gender in 19th- and 20th-Century Europe. It covers both Western, Eastern, Northern and Southern Europe and connects the formation of national identity to ethnic, religious, class and gender identities. It allows vantage points on why particular national narratives were more successful than others. It also highlights both similarities and differences in the construction of national histories across Europe.This volume asks which national histories underpinned which national identity constructions in almost every nation state in Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It explores the construction of national identities through history writing and analyzes their interrelationship with histories of ethnicity/race, class and religion.

With a recent surge of interest in the field, a volume taking stock of important theoretical shifts in the philosophy of history is greatly needed. A Philosophy of History fills this gap by weaving together a range of perspectives on the field which finds itself at a crossroads, and asks where it is headed in the 21st century. The book takes a concerted effort to go beyond the customary three-fold distinction between the speculative, analytic and narrativist approaches in philosophy of history. It considers, what comes after the enduring 'narrativist turn'. Chapters incorporate cutting-edge discussions on the relevance of contemporary political phenomena such as populism, the relation between science and history, pragmatism and the paradigmatic challenge of the Anthropocene. It also re-evaluates the continued relevance of major historical thinkers like Leibniz and R.G. Collingwood, and the endlessly fresh insights they can offer to key debates in the field today. Philosophy of History is a much-needed reappraisal of the philosophy and theory of history; offering an up-to-date overview of major developments in the field, and addressing the pressing questions of where to go next in a 'post-analytical', 'post-narrativist' world.

Hegel and the Representative Constitution provides the first comprehensive historical discussion of the institutional dimension of G. W. F. Hegel's political thought. Elias Buchetmann traces this much-neglected aspect in unprecedented contextual detail and makes the case for reading the Philosophy of Right from 1820 as a contribution to the lively and widespread public debate on the constitutional question in contemporary Central Europe. Drawing on a broad range of primary source material, this volume illuminates the wider political discourse in post-Napoleonic Germany, carefully locates Hegel's institutional commitments within their immediate cultural and political context, and reveals him as something closer to a public intellectual. By exploring this indispensable thinker's demand for the constitutional protection of popular participation in government, it contributes beyond Hegel scholarship to shed new light on the history of democratic theory in early nineteenth-century Europe and encourages critical reflection on questions of representation today.

This timely volume examines the commitments of historicism in the wake of New Historicism. It contributes to the construction of a materialist historicism while, at the same time, proposing that discussions of work need not be limited to the clash between labor and capital. To this end, the essays offer more than a strictly historical view of the complex terms, social and literary, within which labor was treated in the medieval period. Several of the essays strive to reformulate the very critical language we use to think about the categories of labor and work through a continually doubled engagement with modern theories of labor and medieval theories and practices of labor.

Did modernity arrive in South Asia with British colonialism? Or was South Asia already modern by then? What might have that modernity looked like? The Early Modern in South Asia engages with these questions. It brings together ten chapters, which collectively trace the contours of South Asia's early modernity between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. They do this by examining the nature of historical change in various domains, including philosophy, warfare, law, environment, politics, violence, religion, and society. The chapters argue that in all these fields, there were noticeable developments during this period, marking a shift from the medieval to the early modern. The introductory chapter contextualizes this by analysing the politics of periodization in history-writing across the world. It discusses the meanings of the relatively new concept of early modernity and the implications of its use for how we understand historical change and continuity in South Asia.

Examine new trends in the writing of new history--and what they mean to information science History has been devalued, causing a lack of career prospects for historians, a decrease in vocations to the history profession, and historical discontinuity between generations. History Under Debate: International Reflection on the Discipline is a recap of the crucial Second International Historia a Debate conference, held on July 17, 1999 in Santiago de Compostela. This book details the comparative critical perspectives on history, historians, their audiences, and the coming trends that will inevitably impact information science. The in-depth examination provides innovative approaches to historians as they redefine their discipline in relation to the global society of the new millennium while presenting invaluable insights for librarians, social scientists, and political scientists.History Under Debate: International Reflection on the Discipline examines how the writing of history in the twenty-first century is revitalized by international comparative historiography, thanks to new technologies and the multinational integration processes in economy, politics, culture, and academics. The first section discusses the Historia a Debate (HaD) Forum and Movement, detailing the need for change to restore history as a vital global subject in modern times. The remainder of the book consists of reflective and comparative views on the study of history and historiography as well as history in and about Spain and its relation to the rest of the world. The book explores new ways for moving the discipline beyond sources and source criticism alone to a different concept of the historical profession as a science with a human subject that discovers the past as people construct it. Included in this book is the English translation of the HaD Manifesto--a proposal designed to unify historians of the twenty-first century and ensure a new dawn for history, its writings, and its teachings.History Under Debate: International Reflection on the Discipline includes vital discussions on: "Linguistic Turn," Postmodernism, and Deconstruction gender studies and social history objectivity and subjectivity in historical interpretation multiple views of history from differing times and places history as criticism, literature, and reconstructionHistory Under Debate: International Reflection on the Discipline is an essential resource that teaches historians, librarians, social scientists, and humanists how to use cross-border development and new global historiographic networks to bring hope for a future in history.

This interdisciplinary volume explores the relationship between history and a range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences: economics, political science, political theory, international relations, sociology, philosophy, law, literature and anthropology. The relevance of historical approaches within these disciplines has shifted over the centuries. Many of them, like law and economics, originally depended on self-consciously historical procedures. These included the marshalling of evidence from past experience, philological techniques and source criticism. Between the late nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth century, the influence of new methods of research, many indebted to models favoured by the natural sciences, such as statistical, analytical or empirical approaches, secured an expanding intellectual authority while the hegemony of historical methods declined in relative terms. In the aftermath of this change, the essays collected in History in the Humanities and Social Sciences reflect from a variety of angles on the relevance of historical concerns to representative disciplines as they are configured today.

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, texts about the recent and more distant past were produced in remarkable numbers in the lands controlled by the kings of England. This may be seen, in part, as a response to changing social and political circumstances in the wake of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The names of many of the twelfth and thirteenth-century historians are well known, and they include Orderic Vitalis, William of Malmesbury, John of Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon, Gerald of Wales, and Matthew Paris. Yet the manuscripts in which these works survive are also evidence for the involvement of many other people in the production of history, as patrons, scribes, and artists. Illuminated History Books in the Anglo-Norman World focuses on history books of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to examine what they reveal about the creation, circulation, and reception of history in this period. In particular, this research concentrates on illuminated manuscripts. These volumes represent an additional investment of time, labour, and resources, and combinations of text and imagery shed light on engagements with the past as manuscripts were copied at specific times and places. Imagery could be used to reproduce the features of older sources, but it was also used to call attention to particular elements of a text, and to impose frameworks onto the past. As a result, Illuminated History Books in the Anglo-Norman World has the potential to change the way in which we see the medieval past and its historians.

Historians constantly wrestle with uncertainty, never more so than when attempting quantification, yet the field has given little attention to the nature of uncertainty and strategies for managing it. This volume proposes a powerful new approach to uncertainty in ancient history, drawing on techniques widely used in the social and natural sciences. It shows how probability-based techniques used to manage uncertainty about the future or the present can be applied to uncertainty about the past. A substantial introduction explains the use of probability to represent uncertainty. The chapters that follow showcase how the technique can offer leverage on a wide range of problems in ancient history, from the incidence of expropriation in the Classical Greek world to the money supply of the Roman empire.

The idea of progress is a product of historical thinking. It is a bold interpretation of history that combines understandings of the past, perceptions of the present and expectations of the future. This Element examines the shifting scale of this past, present and future configuration from antiquity to the present day. It develops five categories that reveal the conceptual features of progress together with the philosophies of history in which they have been enmeshed, from temporal outlooks that held no notion of progress to universal histories that viewed progress as a law of nature, from speculation on the meaning and direction of history to the total rejection of all historical constructions. Global in scope and conversant with present-day debates in the theory and philosophy of history, the argument throughout is that the scale on which we conceive history plays a determining role in how we think about progress.

Evil is sometimes thought to be incomprehensible and abnormal, falling outside of familiar historical and human processes. And yet the twentieth century was replete with instances of cruelty on a massive scale, including systematic torture, murder, and enslavement of ordinary, innocent human beings. These overwhelming atrocities included genocide, totalitarianism, the Holocaust, and the Holodomor. This Element underlines the importance of careful, truthful historical investigation of the complicated realities of dark periods in human history; the importance of understanding these events in terms that give attention to the human experience of the people who were subject to them and those who perpetrated them; the question of whether the idea of 'evil' helps us to confront these periods honestly; and the possibility of improving our civilization's resilience in the face of the impulses towards cruelty to other human beings that have so often emerged.

Giuseppina D'Oro explores Collingwood's work in epistemology and metaphysics, uncovering his importance beyond his better known work in philosophy of history and aesthetics. This major contribution to our understanding of one of the most important figures in history of philosophy will be essential reading for scholars of Collingwood and all students of metaphysics and the history of philosophy.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203164784

Why do historians so often talk about objectivity, empathy, and fair-mindedness? What roles do such personal qualities play in historical studies? And why does it make sense to call them virtues rather than skills or habits? Historians' Virtues is the first publication to explore these questions in some depth. With case studies from across the centuries, the Element identifies major discontinuities in how and why historians talked about the marks of a good scholar. At the same time, it draws attention to long-term legacies that last until today. Virtues were, and are, invoked in debates over the historian's task. They reveal how historians position themselves vis-a-vis political regimes, religious traditions, or neoliberal university systems. More importantly, they show that historical study not only requires knowledge and technical skills, but also makes demands on the character of its practitioners. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This book turns the received wisdom of European history inside out. From discussions of the Gothic, Hun and Vandal invasions and the fall of the Roman Empire, through other great events and issues of European history, Josep Fontana re-examines the traditional acceptance of such ideas as classical heritage, medieval Christendom, reformation and counter-reformation, absolutism and the idea of progress. At the same time he draws attention to the existence and validity of dissidence, rebellion and variety which are, for him, identifying marks of Europe.From the time of the Ancient Greeks, the European peoples have defined themselves with a sense of superiority by comparing their societies, cultures and traditions with those of their neighbors and with communities encountered further afield. These others were (and sometimes still are) described by Europeans as less civilized, primitive or barbaric. Yet Europe was in reality very far from possessing the distinct and elevated identity of its self-image: indeed the author goes further, for he contends that the persistence of the illusion, enshrined in standard European history, has wide-ranging implications for how European societies both perceive their present and understand their past.Throughout the book, the author takes into account recent historical trends and debates. This is a remarkable blend of synthesis and scholarship vividly brought to life by constant incident and exemplification. The result is an inspired reassessment of Europe's history.

Historians make research queries on Google, ProQuest, and the HathiTrust. They garner information from keyword searches, carried out across millions of documents, their research shaped by algorithms they rarely understand. Historians often then visit archives in whirlwind trips marked by thousands of digital photographs, subsequently explored on computer monitors from the comfort of their offices. They may then take to social media or other digital platforms, their work shaped through these new forms of pre- and post-publication review. Almost all aspects of the historian's research workflow have been transformed by digital technology. In other words, all historians - not just Digital Historians - are implicated in this shift. The Transformation of Historical Research in the Digital Age equips historians to be self-conscious practitioners by making these shifts explicit and exploring their long-term impact. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Studying any subject at degree level is an investment in the future that involves significant cost. Now more than ever, students and their parents need to weigh up the potential benefits of university courses. That's where the Why Study series comes in. This series of books, aimed at students, parents and teachers, explains in practical terms the range and scope of an academic subject at university level and where it can lead in terms of careers or further study. Each book tries to both enthuse the reader about its subject and answer the crucial questions that a college prospectus does not. This volume is for students and potential students of history - it answers the question why study history - and also how to study it, where to study it, what it can do for you in your future worklife, for your personal development, and for the public good. This short guide busts a lot of myths and offers practical advice based on an unparalleled understanding of how history is actually taught on both sides of the Atlantic, in schools and universities.

Although the organizing principle of virtually every world history text is "development", the editor of this volume maintains that this traditional approach fails to address the issue of sustainability. By adopting the ecological process as their major theme, the authors show how the process of human interaction with the natural environment unfolded in the past, and offer perspective on the ecological crises in our world at the beginning of the 21st century. Topics range from broad regional studies that examine important aspects of the global environment that affect nations, to a study of the widespread influence of one important individual on his nation and beyond. The authors take different approaches, but all share the conviction that world history must take ecological process seriously, and they all recognize the ways in which the living and non-living systems of the earth have influenced the course of human affairs.

Although the organizing principle of virtually every world history text is "development", the editor of this volume maintains that this traditional approach fails to address the issue of sustainability. By adopting the ecological process as their major theme, the authors show how the process of human interaction with the natural environment unfolded in the past, and offer perspective on the ecological crises in our world at the beginning of the 21st century. Topics range from broad regional studies that examine important aspects of the global environment that affect nations, to a study of the widespread influence of one important individual on his nation and beyond. The authors take different approaches, but all share the conviction that world history must take ecological process seriously, and they all recognize the ways in which the living and non-living systems of the earth have influenced the course of human affairs.

In Search of Marie-Antoinette in the 1930s follows Austrian biographer Stefan Zweig, American producer Irving Thalberg, and Canadian-American actress Norma Shearer as they attempt to uncover personal aspects of Marie-Antoinette's life at the French court in the late eighteenth-century and to dramatize them in biography, cinema, and performance for public consumption during the 1930s. The first chapter establishes the core subject as an inquiry into the respective contributions of Zweig, Thalberg, and Shearer in formulating an "objective" or "authentic" image of "Marie-Antoinette." The three chapters that follow examine in some detail how Zweig pursued research and drafted the psychological biography at his Salzburg home, Thalberg acquired film rights to the best-selling book and fought the censors to preserve the more sensational aspects of the screenplay at the Culver City studio, and Shearer worked closely with a new producer to give the script a strong romantic angle and to perform the character of the queen on the sound stage. The professionals' research standards and strategic objectives are weighed in the formulation of a new myth at once sensitive to the historical record and suited to the leisure market.

This volume is concerned with the sources for the study of the Crusades, conceived in terms of the records of their history and of their enemies, the motives that inspired them, and the monuments which they left behind. Some of the studies analyze particular historical sources, both written and visual, for the events of the Crusades and the history of the Crusader states. Others look more broadly at the impact of the Crusading movement in the West, its origins and its propaganda, from the first Crusade to the time of Erasmus.

Archaeology, most of us learned in school, consists in the painstaking digging up and sifting of relics from extinct cultures; hardly an exciting or indeed interesting activity - for most of us. Archaeologists and anthropologists, professional and otherwise, know better. In the buried structures and detritus of ancient cultures can be found a world of knowledge and insight - empirical and theoretical - into their cultures as well as our own. This fascinating volume brings these worlds to life, by integrating recent developments in anthropological and sociological theory with a series of detailed studies of prehistoric material culture. It is an exploration of the manner in which semiotic, hermeneutic, Marxist, and post-structuralist approaches radically alter our understanding of the past, and provides a series of innovative studies of key areas of interest to archaeologists and anthropologists.

Beginning in the late eighteenth century, Europeans embarked on a new way of classifying the world, devising genealogies that determined degrees of relatedness by tracing heritage through common ancestry. This methodology organized historical systems into family trees, transforming the closest contemporaneous terms on trees of languages, religions, races, nations, species, or individuals into siblings. Encompassing political fraternity, sister languages, racial discourse on brotherhood, evolutionary sibling species, and intense, often incestuously inclined brother-sister bonds in literature, siblinghood stands out as a ubiquitous-yet unacknowledged-conceptual touchstone across the European long nineteenth century. In all such systems the sibling term, not-quite-same and not-quite-other, serves as an active fault line, necessary for and yet continuously destabilizing definition and classification. In her provocative book, Stefani Engelstein explores the pervasive significance of sibling structures and their essential role in the modern organization of knowledge and identity. Sibling Action argues that this relational paradigm came to structure the modern subject, life sciences, human sciences, and collective identities such as race, religion, and gender. Engelstein considers theoretical constructions of subjectivity through Sophocles' Antigone; fraternal equality and its exclusion of sisters in political rhetoric; the intertwining of economic and kinship theory by Friedrich Engels and Claude Levi-Strauss; Darwin and his contemporaries' accounts of speciation; anthropological and philological depictions of Muslims and Jews at the margins of Europe; and evolutionary psychology's theorizing around the incest taboo. Integrating close readings across the disciplines with panoramic intellectual history and arresting literary interpretations, Sibling Action presents a compelling new understanding of systems of knowledge and provides the foundation for less confrontational formulations of belonging, identity, and agency.