In this collection of essays, Peter Burke explores the theory and practice of what is called new cultural history. He focuses on the varieties of cultural history which have emerged since the writings of Jacob Burckhardt and John Huizinga. No new orthodoxy has emerged to replace the classic model, Burke suggests, despite the importance of innovative approaches inspired by social and cultural anthropology.

Intended as both a historical essay and a self-conscious meditation on the writing of history, this volume takes as its starting point a series of accounts of Rome's origins offered over the course of centuries. Alexandre Grandazzi places these accounts in their contemporary contexts and shows how the growing sophistication in methodology gradually changed the accepted views of the city's origins. He explores, for example, the hypercritical philology of the 19th century which cast aside everything that could not be verified. He then explains how the increase in archaeological discoveries and changing archaeological techniques influenced the story of Rome's birth.

At once a historical essay and a self-conscious meditation on the writing of history, The Foundation of Rome takes as its starting point a series of accounts of Rome's origins offered over the course of centuries. Alexandre Grandazzi places these accounts in their contemporary contexts and shows how the growing sophistication in methodology gradually changed the accepted views of the city's origins. He looks, for example, at the hypercritical philology of the nineteenth century which cast aside everything that could not be verified. He then explains how the increase in archaeological discoveries and changing archaeological techniques influenced the story of Rome's birth.Grandazzi produces a depiction of Rome's origins that is both up-to-date and provocative. His use of scientific parallels in describing changes in the ways texts were analyzed and his broad familiarity with comparative material make his synthesis particularly illuminating, and he writes with clarity, verve, and wit.

In this collection of essays, of which four are published here for the first time, Peter Burke explores the theory and practice of what is called "new cultural history". He focuses on the varieties of cultural history which have emerged since the writings of Jacob Burckhardt and John Huizinga. No new orthodoxy has emerged to replace the classic model, Burke suggests, despite the importance of innovative approaches inspired by social and cultural anthropology.

After discussing the origins and identity of cultural history, Burke explores the social history of dreams and the relation between history and social memory. He presents five case studies addressing topics in the history of early modern Italy. Each is located on the frontiers of cultural history -- between learned and popular culture, between the public and the private spheres, and between the serious and the comic. Burke then turns to the encounter between Europe and the New World and to the phenomenon of cultural translation in the etymological, literal, and metaphorical senses of the term. He concludes with two theoretical investigations: one on the history of mentalities and one which asks why cultural history seems doomed to fragmentation.

How we make history - and what we then make of it - is engagingly dramatized in T. H. Breen's portrait of a 350-year-old American community faced with the costs of its progress. In the particulars of one town's struggle to check development and save its natural environment, Breen shows how our sense of history reflects our ever-changing self-perceptions and hopes for the future. Breen first went to East Hampton, the celebrated Long Island resort town, to write about the Mulford Farmstead, a picturesque saltbox dating from the 1680s. Through his research, he came across a fascinating cast of local characters, past and present, who contributed to, invented, and reinvented the town's history. Breen's work also drew him into contemporary local affairs: factionalism among residents, zoning disputes, and debates over resource management. Driving these heated issues, Breen found, were some dearly held notions about a harmonious, agrarian past that conflicted with what he had come to know about the divisiveness and opportunism of East Hampton's early days. Imagining the Past is about the interplay between some of the East Hampton histories Breen encountered: the official histories of many generations, the myths and oral traditions, and the curious stories that Breen, as an outsider, discerned in the town's rich holdings of artifacts and documents. With a warm yet wry regard for human nature, Breen obliges us to confront our pasts in all their complexities and ironies, no matter how unsettling or inconvenient the experience.

Extremely influential cultural analysis by Uruguayan author published posthumously in 1984. Chasteen's very good English translation includes entire text with original notes, along with useful locating introduction and index. Important contribution to the literature and an excellent volume for classroom use"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Extremely influential cultural analysis by Uruguayan author published posthumously in 1984. Chasteen's very good English translation includes entire text with original notes, along with useful locating introduction and index. Important contribution to the literature and an excellent volume for classroom use"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Employing the approaches of Gramsci and Foucault, Gran proposes a re-conceptualisation of world history. He challenges the convention of relying on totalitarian or democratic functions of a particular state to explain relationships of authority and resistance in a number of national contexts.

'Building upon four decades of his own scholarly work in the field of history, Frykenberg presents a notable achievement for clarifying the rich overlap between facts and theory, evidence and belief, history and religion, East and West. He deserves to be commended.'--Lamin Sanneh, Yale Divinity School

This fascinating book examines how the past pervades French public life, how the French both commemorate their past triumphs, heroes, and martyrs and attempt to erase the more violent events in their history. The book surveys the ways that various political communities in France during the past two centuries have manufactured different versions of the past in order to define their identities and legitimate their goals. Beginning with a discussion of the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989, Robert Gildea moves backward in time to show how rival factions have used various elements of French political culture-from the grandeur of the ancien regime to Catholicism, Jacobinism, Anarchism, and Bonapartism-to further their ends. Gildea shows how proponents of revolution and counterrevolution, church and state, centralism and regionalism, and national identity and nationalism campaigned to achieve the widest possible acceptance of their own view of the past. He describes the continuing battle between Left and Right for association with national heroes such as Joan of Arc and Napoleon. He exposes the reworking of collective views of the past by political communities, in order to increase or recover political legitimacy. Written in clear and trenchant prose, the book offers a new perspective on French history and political culture.

The collapse of historicism was not merely the demise of an academic tradition but signified a shift in the understanding of hermeneutics and metaphysics. Whereas earlier books have explored the rise and dominance of historicism within academic history, this is the first to trace its collapse and to show how it was shaped by larger philosophical and scientific concerns. Charles R. Bambach's lucid account of the demise of historicism within the context of German metaphysics provides a rich new perspective on the development of the young Heidegger's concept of "historicity" and on the origins of postmodern thought. Bambach reconstructs the methodological debates arising from a pervasive sense of crisis among German philosophers in the late nineteenth century. He details the divergent attempts by the Neo-Kantians, Nietzsche, and Dilthey to overcome the limitations of historical relativism. Heidegger's view of "historicity," Bambach shows, radically transforms the problematic of historicism into a discourse concerning the crisis of philosophical modernity.

"A Companion to the Study of History" guides students through all the historical concepts, theories, methods and problems confronting those engaged in the serious study of history. It distinguishes between history as action and history as narrative and illuminates the vital interplay between understanding and doing in a lively and accessible manner.

The author covers the nature of history, questions about action and meaning, views of the past, history as discourse, narrative and knowledge, the use of evidence, causation and event, theories of history and also a wide variety of recent theoretical perspectives and schools of thought.

During the 1976 Bicentennial celebration, millions of Americans engaged with the past in brand-new ways. They became absorbed by historical miniseries like Roots, visited museums with new exhibits that immersed them in the past, propelled works of historical fiction onto the bestseller list, and participated in living history events across the nation. While many of these activities were sparked by the Bicentennial, M. J. Rymsza-Pawlowska shows that, in fact, they were symptomatic of a fundamental shift in Americans' relationship to history during the 1960s and 1970s. For the majority of the twentieth century, Americans thought of the past as foundational to, but separate from, the present, and they learned and thought about history in informational terms. But Rymsza-Pawlowska argues that the popular culture of the 1970s reflected an emerging desire to engage and enact the past on a more emotional level: to consider the feelings and motivations of historic individuals and, most importantly, to use this in reevaluating both the past and the present. This thought-provoking book charts the era's shifting feeling for history, and explores how it serves as a foundation for the experience and practice of history making today.

Western philosophies of history commonly regard nature as a mere arena in which human beings suffer, labour and create. In this lucid and clearly written contribution to the subject, Blackburn argues that such a narrow perspective must be transcended. Nature is not simply a backdrop for human actors, but is itself an active force which created and perpetually consumes the human species. It is the very reason why human beings perpetually recreate and destroy one another.
Drawing on a wide range of disciplines--from the natural science of Darwin and Prigogine to the social theories of the fourteenth-century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun and the cosmic speculations of the Vedas--Blackburn explores the dialectic of creation, preservation and destruction underlying human history. He recounts how this conflict is manifested through religion and war, pollution and plagues. European feudalism is analysed as a means of preventing Europe's destruction by Moors, Magyars and Vikings; the Chinese empire of contending with ecological catastrophe and barbarian invasion.
To conquer or be conquered; to develop or be destroyed by nature: these are predicaments set by the Vampire of Reason. Hegel's idea of a Cunning of Reason guiding history is belied, yet partly vindicated by nature; a hidden hand unfolds, not only in the capitalist marketplace but in a Darwinian struggle for social existence accelerating human history.

Georg Lukacs' early Marxist philosophy of the 1920s laid the foundations of Critical Theory. However the evaluation of Lukacs' philosophical contribution has been largely determined by one-sided readings of eminent theorists like Adorno, Habermas, Honneth or even Lukacs himself. This book offers a new reconstruction of Lukacs' early Marxist work, capable of restoring its dialectical complexity by highlighting its roots in his neo-Kantian, 'pre-Marxist' period. In his pre-Marxist work Lukacs sought to articulate a critique of formalism from the standpoint of a dubious mystical ethics of revolutionary praxis. Consequently, Lukacs discovered a more coherent and realistic answer to his philosophical dilemmas in Marxism. At the same time, he retained his neo-Kantian reservations about idealist dialectics. In his reading of historical materialism he combined non-idealist, non-systematic historical dialectics with an emphasis on conscious, collective, transformative praxis. Reformulated in this way Lukacs' classical argument plays a central role within a radical Critical Theory.

. . . eminently readable . . . admirably picks up the spirit of what Hegel is saying. . . . more readable and accurate than Hartmann's, and it trans lates a more readable text than does Nisbet's. It includes (as Hartmann's does not) an excerpt, which serves as chapter five, from 'The Geo graphical Basis of History' (particularly interesting for what it says of America), and a brief chapter six, entitled 'The Division of History.' The volume closes with an appendix, translating 341--360 of Hegel's Philosophy of Right and deals directly with the very concept of 'World History.' It constitutes a big help in coming to grips with what Hegel means by 'Spirit.' --Quentin Lauer, SJ, Fordham University, in International Philosophical Quarterly

Two distinguished historians, one an advocate of the new scientific or "cliometric" history and the other a traditional historian, debate the validity of their respective methods of studying the past. While they differ sharply on many issues, in the end they agree that history is a vigorous, evolving discipline able to absorb the best of both scientific and humanistic thought. "Fogel asserts persuasively that cliometrics is best characterized by the explicit use of social science theory, and only secondly by its use of quantification.... Elton elegantly defends the traditional virtues of catholicity of method, skepticism toward sources, and informed scholarship. The two scholars' evident respect for each other enriches the debates as well as humanizes it." -David Keymer, Library Journal "Both scholars are leading representatives of their modi operandi, and both have laid down path-breaking, interpretations of their subjects of study, leaving controversy and new methodology in their wake. It is therefore an event unto itself that two such professors of history should pause for a moment to meet at the fork in the road and debate the roads to the past." -Mark R. Horowitz, History Today "Anyone interested in historiography will find [this book] useful." -Vincent A. Lapomarda, America

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.

A classic volume by a noted philosopher, available again. John William Miller (1895-1978) taught at Williams College, where from 1945 to 1960 he was Mark Hopkins Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy. His extraordinary teaching is described in Masters: Portraits of Great Teachers, edited by Joseph Epstein. While deeply indebted to Plato, Kant, and Hegel, Miller arrived at a strikingly original reinterpretation of the history of philosophy, which, he believed, resolved long-standing epistemological and moral problems generated by that history. In The Definition of the Thing, an unusually provocative and original essay, Miller had works out a number of the basic contentions of his mature philosophy.

John William Miller (1895-1978) taught at Williams College, where from 1945 to 1960 he was Mark Hopkins Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy. His extraordinary teaching is described in Masters: Portraits of Great Teachers, edited by Joseph Epstein. While deeply indebted to Plato, Kant, and Hegel, Miller arrived at a strikingly original reinterpretation of the history of philosophy, which, he believed, resolved long-standing epistemological and moral problems generated by that history.

The Philosophy of History criticizes all attempts to interpret history on premises not themselves historical. Miller holds that "to view history philosophically is to consider it as a constitutional mode of experience, a way of organization no less fundamental than physics or logic".

In The Definition of the Thing, an unusually provocative and original essay, Miller had already worked out a number of the basic contentions of his mature philosophy.

"Every working historian, from the novice to the veteran, from the untrained amateur to the professionally prepared, can profit immeasurably from this important work. . . . The Rhetoric of History belongs on the shelf of all those who aspire to effective historical authorship." Choice The sole purpose of this book, said author Savoie Lottinville, is "to help the person committed to history to become an effective writer in that inviting field." Lottinville emphasizes that writing must be practiced as a discipline, as exacting as research and as elusive as achievement in any other art. As every historian discovers, it is one thing to learn historical method and amass data and quite another to write effectively about any period or episode. Research is an absorbing means to an end, but writing is often baffling, especially to the beginner. The Rhetoric of History analyzes techniques historians need to employ and includes examples of the writing styles of many of the most notable historians of the United States and Europe. Covering topics like conceptualization in history, constructing scenes, narrative structures, analytical historical writing and editing, The Rhetoric of History will prove to be indispensable to historians-both professional and amateur. Savoie Lottinville, was director of the University of Oklahoma Press for thirty years and editor of Life of George Bent: Written from His Letters and A Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory During the Year 1819, both published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

To what extent do we and can we understand others-other peoples, species, times, and places? What is the role of others within ourselves, epitomized in the notion of unconscious forces? Can we come to terms with our internalized others in ways that foster mutual understanding and counteract the tendency to scapegoat, project, victimize, and indulge in prejudicial and narcissistic impulses? How do various fields or disciplines address or avoid such questions? And have these questions become particularly pressing and not in the least confined to other peoples, times, and places? Making selective and critical use of the thought of such important figures as Sigmund Freud, Jacques Derrida, and Mikhail Bakhtin, in Understanding Others Dominick LaCapra investigates a series of crucial topics from the current state of deconstruction, trauma studies, and the humanities to newer fields such as animal studies and posthumanist scholarship. LaCapra adroitly brings critical historical thought into a provocative engagement with politics and our current political climate. This is LaCapra at his best, critically rethinking major currents and exploring the old and the new in combination, often suggesting what this means in the age of Trump.

The prospectus that announced the creation of The Institute of the Humanities promised an inaugural course of twelve lectures, to be given by its founder and entitled, "Concerning a New Interpretation of International History. (Exposition and Examination of A. J. Toynbee's work, A Study of History.)" But the course as given (in 1948-49) went much farther than that announcement, for the "examination" consisted principally of a critique of Toynbee's work from the point of view of Ortega's own doctrines, together with the unfolding of his personal ideas about the science of history and the progress of peoples-in particular the Romans-with frequent side excursions, meant to be systematic, into the crisis of the present time. The central theme of these pages becomes "the analysis of life established in illegitimacy . . . of which the two gigantic examples are the declining days of the Roman Empire and the period in which we ourselves are living." To the modern crisis, Ortega brings a basic analysis and a program of reform for intelligence by which contemporary life might emerge from the confusion it now suffers.

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.