This book examines the evolution of historical professionalism, with the development of an international community that shares a set of values regarding both methodological minimum demands and what constitutes new results. Historical professionalism is not a fixed set of skills, but a concept with varying import and meaning at different times depending on changing norms. Torstendahl covers the propagation of these different ideals and of new educational forms from the late 18th century to the present, from Ranke's state-centrism to a historiography borne by social theories.

John Host addresses liberal, Marxist and post modernist historiography on Victorian working people to question the special status of historical knowledge. The central focus of this study is a debate about mid-Victorian social stability, a condition conventionally equated with popular acceptance of the prevailing social order. Host does not join the debate but takes it as his object of analysis, deconstructing the notion of stability and the analysis that purports to explain it. Host examines an extensive range of archival material to illustrate the ambiguity of the historical field, the rhetorical strategies through which the illusion of its unity is created, and the ultimately fictive quality of historical narrative.

The quest for the laws underlying the history of human societies has occupied some of the greatest thinkers in history, from Heraclitus and Plato to Marx and J.S. Mill. And yet today historicism is widely considered to be intellectually discredited. In this unorthodox and trail-blazing work Graeme Snooks argues that it is possible to construct a scientific theory of human nature. On the basis of this paradigm shift the author lays bare the forces driving human society from its earlier beginnings to its present stage of evolution. The text is divided into two parts that combine methodological, sociological and historical reflection. Part I considers the nature of laws, the reasons we might expect to find them at work in history, and why their formulation escaped the great historicists of the past. Part II employs a novel inductive framework to draw out the general propositions underlying the different forms of human society. These general propositions concerning societal dynamics, historical change and institutional, are the laws of history.

This volume focuses on the role of the computer and electronic technology in the discipline of history. It includes representative articles addressing H-Net, scholarly publication, on-line reviewing, enhanced lectures using the World Wide Web, and historical research.

The highly practical guide introduces the reader to the main areas of British women's history: education, work, family life, sexuality and politics. After an introduction to each topic detailed commentary is provided on a range of primary source material together with advice on further reading. For the new edition the author has written a brand new chapter on how to choose a dissertation subject and the pitfalls to avoid.

This volume focuses on the role of the computer and electronic technology in the discipline of history. It includes representative articles addressing H-Net, scholarly publication, on-line reviewing, enhanced lectures using the World Wide Web, and historical research.

This book explores the historical dimension of David Hume's philosophy, a feature that Spencer Wertz calls 'historical empiricism.' According to Wertz, Hume sought to understand the present in terms of the past in a way that anticipates the historical constructionism of R.G. Collingwood and Herbert Butterfield. Hume's method is to tell a story about something's origin in which ideas yield impressions. These impressions eventually yield to experience that includes history as part of its structure. Arguing that Hume worked between history and philosophy, Wertz demonstrates that Hume's historical empiricism consists of four key concepts. These concepts are history, human nature, experience, and nature, all of which play a role in historical narration, taste, moral judgments, and the historiography of science. Bringing new insights to the study of Hume's work, this book will be an important resource for scholars of philosophy.

This Companion presents a clear thematic overview of historiography explored through a series of stimulating and wide-ranging articles. Compiled by experts in the field, the Companion is fully indexed for ease of access.

The historic long-term economic interconnections of the world are now universally accepted. The idea of the 'world system' advanced by Immanuel Wallerstein has set the period of linkage in the early modern period. But some academics think this date is much too late and denies a much longer interconnection going back as much as five thousand years.
Reframing the chronology of the world system exercises powerful influences on the writing of history. It integrates the areas of Asia and the East which were marginalized by Wallerstein into the heart of the debate and provides a much more convincing account of developments which cannot otherwise be explained. It undermines the primacy claimed for Europe as the major agent of economic change, an issue with implications far beyond the realm of history.

Social Construction of the Past examines how mainstream scholarship constructs the past and, in creating a people's cultural history, appropriates it and turns it into a form of domination by one group over another.
Acknowledgements of the intellectual and scholarly contribution of subjugated peoples such as women, minorities, and workers has led to a critical review of the established bodies of knowledge. Social Construction of the Past looks at the way 'postcolonial' scholars redefine the nature of scholarship, and themselves, in order to develop a more egalitarian discourse. It probes the nature of the relationship of labour, race and gender to power and class. The chapters cover a broad range of topics, from the role of intellectuals in restructuring a non-apartheid South Africa, to Haitian working-class women using sexuality to resist domination.
Social Construction of the Past is essential reading for academics and students from a whole range of different social and intellectual backgrounds, including anthropology, archaeology, history, comparative literature, political science and sociology.

This international academic and professional yearbook contains articles and reviews on matters of interest to all concerned with history in education from contributors throughout the world. The yearbook will encourage rigorous exploration or philosophical, psychological, sociological and historical perspectives upon history in education and their relation to practice where appropriate. The theme of the first edition is centralisation and decentralisation of national curricula.

In the field of medieval Indian historiography, an eight-volume magnum opus, History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, by Sir Henry Myers Elliot (1808-53) and the editor-compiler of his posthumous papers, John Dowson (1820-81), was published from London between 1867 and 1877. These landmark volumes continue to retain their popularity even nearly hundred and fifty years later, and scholars still learn from and conduct their research on the basis of this work. However, an enterprise of this scale and magnitude was bound to suffer from some serious shortcomings. An eminent Indian scholar, S.H. Hodivala undertook the daunting task of annotating Elliot and Dowson's volumes and worked through all the new material, selecting or criticizing and adding his own suggestions where previous comments did not exist or appeared unsuitable. The first volume of Hodivala's annotated Studies, was published in 1939, while the second was published posthumously in 1957. Over the years, while the work of Elliot and Dowson has seen many reprints, and is even available online now, Hodivala's volumes have receded into obscurity. A new edition is presented here for the first time. Hodivala also published critical commentaries on 238 of about 2000 entries included in another very famous work, Hobson-Jobson (London, 1886) by Sir Henry Yule (1820-89) and Arthur Coke Burnell (1840-82). These have also been included in the present edition. These volumes are thus aimed at serving as an indispensable compendium of both, Elliot and Dowson's, and for Yule and Burnell's excellent contributions of colonial scholarship. At the same time these would also serve as a guide for comparative studies and critical appreciation of historical texts. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

In Decoding the Past, Peter Loewenberg has collected eleven of his brilliant essays on psychohistory, a discipline that has emerged from the synthesis of traditional historical analysis and clinical psychoanalysis. He surveys this relatively new field--its methods and its problems--to show the special contributions that psychoanalysis can make to history. He then further explores the psychohistorical method by applying it to studies of personality, cultures, groups, and mass movements, demonstrating that psychohistory offers one of the most powerful of interpretive approaches to history.

Decoding the Past is an impressive study that demonstrates the range of Loewenberg's own work in history and psychoanalysis and the full promise of an important and innovative methodology for others. His new essay takes up many of the criticisms and concerns raised about the method of psychohistory, and offers a cogent defense for its continued usage.

In these essays some of today's leading literary scholars and cultural critics re-examine major writers, genres, and themes in relation to their traditional period affiliations. The essays cover a broad range of writers and periods from the Middle Ages to the present, grouped in two main areas: Chaucer and Medieval and Renaissance studies (Larry D. Benson, Heiko A. Oberman, Lee Patterson, and Aldo Scaglione), and English and American literary history (Sanford Budick, H. M. Daleski, Denis Donoghue, Robert J. Griffin, Geoffrey Hartman, J. Hillis Miller, Jerome McGann, and Helen Vendler). In addition to shedding new light on a specific author, each essay also refines or reinvigorates critical approaches to specific periods. The analyses illuminate and clarify our understanding of what are traditionally but problematically called the Medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Romantic, Modern, and Post-modern eras in European cultural history.

"History and Computing" introduces its readers to the history and practice of historical computing. While functioning as a practical introduction to the field, this book is designed also to raise awareness of the use of computers as an important tool for the historian, discussing such topics as the pattern of 19th century emigration from the UK; the performance of the American and German economies in the 1930s; and the Lancashire cotton industry, all of which demonstrate possibilities which computers offer to the historian.
Through practical workshop exercises, History and Computing provides a skills-enabling introduction to basic computer terminology. Examining the use of spreadsheets and how historians design and work with them, the book includes spreadsheet exercises based around a range of historical data sets. In addition, the authors explore the use of databases and demonstrate how to construct them. Merging historical exploration and practical instruction, "History and Computing" encourages further study and prompts its readers to apply the skills they have learnt to a number of examples.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the Rodney King beating, the O.J. Simpson trial, what is to count as history, and how can it be recounted? The Persistence of History is an anthology of essays from major film scholars and historians which focuses on a radical contemporary challenge to historical representation in film. This challenge is brought about by what the collection terms "the modernist event" - novel historical occurrences unthinkable before the 20th century and raised to visibility, if not intelligibility, through the mass mediations of film and television. Contributors: Robert Burgoyne, Thomas Elsaesser, Sumiko Higashi, Bill Nichols, Patrice Petro, Dana Polan, Shawn Rosenheim, Robert Rosenstone, Janet Staiger, Frank Tomasulo, Hayden White, Denise Youngblood.

"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.

Although much has been written of the nature of history and its disciplinary problems, less attention has been paid to the history of thought. M.C. Lemon's rigorously philosophical work first re-asserts the discipline of history in general as narrative based, before pursuing the methodological implications for the history of thought.
This original work of scholarship will raise the level of argument in philosophy of history and provoke debate among historians, philosophers, and political theorists.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203195272

History, Memory and Public Life introduces readers to key themes in the study of historical memory and its significance by considering the role of historical expertise and understanding in contemporary public reflection on the past. Divided into two parts, the book addresses both the theoretical and applied aspects of historical memory studies. 'Approaches to history and memory' introduces key methodological and theoretical issues within the field, such as postcolonialism, sites of memory, myths of national origins, and questions raised by memorialisation and museum presentation. 'Difficult pasts' looks at history and memory in practice through a range of case studies on contested, complex or traumatic memories, including the Northern Ireland Troubles, post-apartheid South Africa and the Holocaust. Examining the intersection between history and memory from a wide range of perspectives, and supported by guidance on further reading and online resources, this book is ideal for students of history as well as those working within the broad interdisciplinary field of memory studies.

Although recognition of reminiscing as a potentially adaptive process can be traced back over 30 years to the seminal work of Robert Butler as discussed in the Foreword, there has been little effort to consolidate the work and paint a complete picture of reminiscing as an entity. Here, reminiscing is presented as a multi-disciplinary topic, examining the theory of, and research on, reminiscing. The book also discusses the different ways of conducting life-review interviews and explores therapeutic applications.; Contributors to this book, many of whom are pioneers and leading figures in the field, discuss and elaborate their latest thinking and research findings from multiple perspectives. The volume's strength derives from its multi-disciplinary nursing, psychiatry, psychology, gerontology, community advocacy and multinational Australia, Canada, England, Sweden and the United States treatment. James Birren, Irene Burnside, and Phillipe Cappeliez are a few of the eminent scholars authoring this volume.

The use of contemporary oral history to improve public policies and programs is a growing, transdisciplinary practice. Indispensable for students and practitioners, Practicing Oral History to Improve Public Policies and Programs is the first book to define the practice, explain how policy-makers use it, show how it relates to other types of oral history, and provide guidance on the ethics and legalities involved. Packed with case studies from disciplines as diverse as medicine, agriculture, and race relations, as well as many examples from the author's own work, this book provides an essential overview of the current state of the field within oral history for public policy and a complete methodology for the process of designing and implementing an oral history project. The comprehensive How To section demonstrates how to use the practice to advance the reader's career, their chosen discipline and the public interest, whether their field is in oral history or in public policy. This book is an important resource for oral historians, fledgling or experienced, who are keen to find new applications and funding for their work, as well as for professionals in the public and not-for-profit sectors who want to learn to use oral history to improve their own policies and programs.

In this extraordinary analysis of the meaning of the remembered past, Lukacs discusses the evolution of historical consciousness since its first emergence about three centuries ago. Among the diverse subjects he examines are the endurance of national characteristics; the development of language, history, and democracy; public opinion; the problem of religious history; memory and time; history and physics; motives and causes; and the end of the Modern Age. In a new introduction, Lukacs comments on the continual decline of historical knowledge and the teaching of history.

In "History After Lacan, " Teresa Brennan argues that Jacques Lacan was not an ahistorical post-structuralist. She tells the story of a social psychosis, beginning with a discussion of Lacan's neglected theory of history which argued that we are in the grip of a psychotic's era which began in the seventeenth century and climaxes in the present.
By extending and elaborating on Lacan's theory, Brennan develops a general theory of modernity. Contrary to postmodern assumptions, she argues, we need a general historical explanation. An understanding of historical dynamics is essential if we are to make the connections between the outstanding facts of modernity--ethnocentrism, the relation between the sexes, and ecological catastrophe.
A challenging feminist, interdisciplinary study, "History After Lacan" will be essential reading for social, cultural, and political theorists, historians, psychoanalysts, and literary theorists.

Neo-classical economics is frequently criticized for paying inadequate attention to historical processes. However, it has proved easier to make broad claims that "history matters" than to theorize with any depth about the appropriate role for history in economic analysis. "Historical Analysis in Economics" considers what history can contribute to the science of economics: how would it matter if "history mattered?";Leading economic historians consider both the general aspects of this question and specific examples where long run changes have clearly impacted on the economic landscape, including issues related to employment and retirement and changing attitudes to business culture.

The historic long term economic interconnections of the world are now universally accepted. The idea of the economic "world system" advanced by Immanual Wallerstein has set the period of linkage in the early modern period, but Andre Gunder Frank thinks that this date is much too late and denies the much longer run of interconnection going back as much as 5000 years. In "The World System", the authors argue through this issue, in a debate contributed to by William McNeill and Immanuel Wallerstein, among others.