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Books > History > Theory & methods > Historiography
How do intellectuals engage with and affect their publics? What is the role of the public intellectual in the new age of political uncertainties? What challenges face female intellectuals and those speaking from an ethnic, national or class position? This exciting collection responds to these questions by offering a broad-ranging account of the changing role of intellectuals in public life. The volume opens with provocative essays on the idea and role of the public intellectual from Alexander, Evans and Zulaika. Chapters from Rabinbach on intellectuals' responses to totalitarianism, Outhwaite on what it means to be a European intellectual, and Auer's discussion of the dissident intellectual in the collapse of communism lead onto vigorous debate of earlier points discussed through specific intellectual case studies from Tocqueville to Hayek. Intellectuals and their Publics will attract a broad readership interested in the role of the intellectual, with particular appeal for sociologists, political theorists and historians of ideas.
Bernini and Pallavicino, the artist and the Jesuit cardinal, are closely related figures at the papal courts of Urban VIII and Alexander VII, at which Bernini was the principal artist. The analysis of Pallavicino's writings offers a new perspective on Bernini's art and artistry and allow us to understand the visual arts in papal Rome as a 'making manifest' of the fundamental truths of faith. Pallavicino's views on art and its effects differ fundamentally from the perspective developed in Bernini's biographies offering a perspective on the tension between artist and patron, work and message. In Pallavicino's writings the visual arts emerge as being intrinsically bound up with the very core of religion involving questions of idolatry, mimesis and illusionism that would prove central to the aesthetic debates of the eighteenth century.
In Rethinking German History, first published in 1987, Richard J. Evans argues for a social-historical approach to the German past that pays equal attention to objective social structures and subjective values and experiences. If German history has been seen as an exception to the 'normal' development of Western society, this is not least because historians have until recently largely failed to look beyond the world of high politics, institutions, organizations and ideologies to broader historical problems of German society and German mentalities. By applying and adapting approaches learned from French and British social history as they have been developed over the last quarter of a century, it is possible to achieve a rethinking of German history which does away with many of the textbook myths that have encrusted the historiogrpahy of Germany for so long. This book will be valuable for students of German history and politics, and brings together essays widely used in teaching. Its broad coverage of social history will also be useful to all those interested in contemporary historiography or the comparative study of European history.
Sheila Cordner traces a tradition of literary resistance to dominant pedagogies in nineteenth-century Britain, recovering an overlooked chapter in the history of thought about education. This book considers an influential group of writers - all excluded from Oxford and Cambridge because of their class or gender - who argue extensively for the value of learning outside of schools altogether. From just beyond the walls of elite universities, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Thomas Hardy, and George Gissing used their position as outsiders as well as their intimate knowledge of British universities through brothers, fathers, and friends, to satirize rote learning in schools for the working classes as well as the education offered by elite colleges. Cordner analyzes how predominant educational rhetoric, intended to celebrate England's progress while simultaneously controlling the spread of knowledge to the masses, gets recast not only by the four primary authors in this book but also by insiders of universities, who fault schools for their emphasis on memorization. Drawing upon working-men's club reports, student guides, educational pamphlets, and materials from the National Home Reading Union, as well as recent work on nineteenth-century theories of reading, Cordner unveils a broader cultural movement that embraced the freedom of learning on one's own.
This fresh collection of essays questions how the historical process affects our conception of science, including our understanding of its validity as well as our general conception of knowledge. The essays in this book consider the philosophical labours spanning the work of Descartes, Kant and Hegel, still the philosophical basis of our modern understanding of science, as well as recent selected philosophers and historians of science such as Kuhn and Feyerbend. Themes raised include the philosophical basis for the validity of science, the possibility of ever knowing the independent world as it truly is, and the intelligibility of construing scientific knowledge as a historical. Taken separately and together, these essays provide a sustained analysis of scientific claims to objective standing, the historicity of thought and inquiry. They point toward unfinished philosophical business and the need for a new beginning.
This edited collection contributes to the current vivid multidisciplinary debate on East European memory politics and the post-communist instrumentalization and re-mythologization of World War II memories. The book focuses on the three Slavic countries of post-Soviet Eastern Europe - Russia, Ukraine and Belarus - the epicentre of Soviet war suffering, and the heartland of the Soviet war myth. The collection gives insight into the persistence of the Soviet commemorative culture and the myth of the Great Patriotic War in the post-Soviet space. It also demonstrates that for geopolitical, cultural, and historical reasons the political uses of World War II differ significantly across Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, with important ramifications for future developments in the region and beyond. The chapters 'Introduction: War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus', 'From the Trauma of Stalinism to the Triumph of Stalingrad: The Toponymic Dispute over Volgograd' and 'The "Partisan Republic": Colonial Myths and Memory Wars in Belarus' are published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com. The chapter 'Memory, Kinship, and Mobilization of the Dead: The Russian State and the "Immortal Regiment" Movement' is published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license at link.springer.com.
The classic explanation of the craft of history and the vital worth of historians to civilizationIn this volume, English historian Richard Evans offers a defence of the importance of his craft. At a time when fact and historical truth are under unprecedented assault, Evans shows us why history is necessary. Taking us into the historians' workshop to show us just how good history gets written, he demolishes the wilder claims of postmodern historians, who deny the possibility of any realistic grasp of history, and explains the deadly political dangers of losing a historical perspective on the way we live our lives.
The essential handbook for doing historical research in the twenty-first century The Princeton Guide to Historical Research provides students, scholars, and professionals with the skills they need to practice the historian's craft in the digital age, while never losing sight of the fundamental values and techniques that have defined historical scholarship for centuries. Zachary Schrag begins by explaining how to ask good questions and then guides readers step-by-step through all phases of historical research, from narrowing a topic and locating sources to taking notes, crafting a narrative, and connecting one's work to existing scholarship. He shows how researchers extract knowledge from the widest range of sources, such as government documents, newspapers, unpublished manuscripts, images, interviews, and datasets. He demonstrates how to use archives and libraries, read sources critically, present claims supported by evidence, tell compelling stories, and much more. Featuring a wealth of examples that illustrate the methods used by seasoned experts, The Princeton Guide to Historical Research reveals that, however varied the subject matter and sources, historians share basic tools in the quest to understand people and the choices they made. Offers practical step-by-step guidance on how to do historical research, taking readers from initial questions to final publication Connects new digital technologies to the traditional skills of the historian Draws on hundreds of examples from a broad range of historical topics and approaches Shares tips for researchers at every skill level
A new picture of China's rise since the Age of Exploration and its historical impact on the modern world. The establishment of the Great Ming dynasty in 1368 was a monumental event in world history. A century before Columbus, Beijing sent a series of diplomatic missions across the South China Sea and Indian Ocean that paved the way for China's first modern global era. 1368 maps China's ascendance from the embassies of Admiral Zheng He to the arrival of European mariners and the shock of the Opium Wars. In Ali Humayun Akhtar's new picture of world history, China's current rise evokes an earlier epoch, one that sheds light on where Beijing is heading today. Spectacular accounts in Persian and Ottoman Turkish describe palaces of silk and jade in Beijing's Forbidden City. Malay legends recount stories of Chinese princesses arriving in Melaka with gifts of porcelain and gold. During Europe's Age of Exploration, Iberian mariners charted new passages to China, which the Dutch and British East India Companies transformed into lucrative tea routes. But during the British Industrial Revolution, the rise of steam engines and factories allowed the export of the very commodities once imported from China. By the end of the Opium Wars and the arrival of Commodore Perry in Japan, Chinese and Japanese reformers called for their own industrial revolutions to propel them into the twentieth century. What has the world learned from China since the Ming, and how did China reemerge in the 1970s as a manufacturing superpower? Akhtar's book provides much-needed context for understanding China's rise today and the future of its connections with both the West and a resurgent Asia.
The easy accessibility of political fiction in the long eighteenth century made it possible for any reader or listener to enter into the intellectual debates of the time, as much of the core of modern political and economic theory was to be found first in the fiction, not the theory, of this age. Amusingly, many of these abstract ideas were presented for the first time in stories featuring less-than-gifted central characters. The five particular works of fiction examined here, which this book takes as embodying the core of the Enlightenment, focus more on the individual than on social group. Nevertheless, in these same works of fiction, this individual has responsibilities as well as rights-and these responsibilities and rights apply to every individual, across the board, regardless of social class, financial status, race, age, or gender. Unlike studies of the Enlightenment which focus only on theory and nonfiction, this study of fiction makes evident that there was a vibrant concern for the constructive as well as destructive aspects of emotion during the Enlightenment, rather than an exclusive concern for rationality.
This is a study of ekphrasis, the art of making listeners and readers 'see' in their imagination through words alone, as taught in ancient rhetorical schools and as used by Greek writers of the Imperial period (2nd-6th centuries CE). The author places the practice of ekphrasis within its cultural context, emphasizing the importance of the visual imagination in ancient responses to rhetoric, poetry and historiography. By linking the theoretical writings on ekphrasis with ancient theories of imagination, emotion and language, she brings out the persuasive and emotive function of vivid language in the literature of the period. This study also addresses the contrast between the ancient and the modern definitions of the term ekphrasis, underlining the different concepts of language, literature and reader response that distinguish the ancient from the modern approach. In order to explain the ancient understanding of ekphrasis and its place within the larger system of rhetorical training, the study includes a full analysis of the ancient technical sources (rhetorical handbooks, commentaries) which aims to make these accessible to non-specialists. The concluding chapter moves away from rhetorical theory to consider the problems and challenges involved in 'turning listeners into spectators' with a particular focus on the role of ekphrasis within ancient fiction. Attention is also paid to texts that lie at the intersection of the modern and ancient definitions of ekphrasis, such as Philostratos' Imagines and the many ekphraseis of buildings and monuments to be found in Late Antique literature.
For much of the twentieth century, French intellectual life was dominated by theoreticians and historians of mentalite. Traditionally, the study of the mind and of its limits and capabilities was the domain of philosophy, however in the first decades of the twentieth century practitioners of the emergent human and social sciences were increasingly competing with philosophers in this field: ethnologists, sociologists, psychologists and historians of science were all claiming to study 'how people think'. Scholars, including Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, Leon Brunschvicg, Lucien Levy-Bruhl, Lucien Febvre, Abel Rey, Alexandre Koyre and Helene Metzger were all investigating the mind historically and participating in shared research projects. Yet, as they have since been appropriated by the different disciplines, literature on their findings has so far failed to recognise the connections between their research and their importance in intellectual history. In this exemplary book, Cristina Chimisso reconstructs the world of these intellectuals and the key debates in the philosophy of mind, particularly between those who studied specific mentalities by employing prevalently historical and philological methods, and those who thought it possible to write a history of the mind, outlining the evolution of ways of thinking that had produced the modern mentality. Dr Chimisso situates the key French scholars in their historical context and shows how their ideas and agendas were indissolubly linked with their social and institutional positions, such as their political and religious allegiances, their status in academia, and their familial situation. The author employs a vast range of original research, using philosophical and scientific texts as well as archive documents, correspondence and seminar minutes from the period covered, to recreate the milieu in which these relatively neglected scholars made advances in the history of philosophy and science, and produced
Bringing together scholars from literature and the history of ideas, Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture explores new ways of negotiating the boundaries between cognitive and bodily models of emotion, and between different versions of the will as active or passive. In the process, it juxtaposes the historical formation of such ideas with contemporary philosophical debates. It frames a dialogue between rhetoric and medicine, politics and religion, in order to examine the relationship between mind and body and between experience and the senses. Some chapters discuss literature, in studies of Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton; other essays concentrate on philosophical arguments, both Aristotelian and Galenic models from antiquity, and new mechanistic formations in Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza. A powerful sense of paradox emerges in treatments of the passions in the early modern period, also reflected in new literary and philosophical forms in which inwardness was displayed, analysed and studied"the autobiography, the essay, the soliloquy"genres which rewrite the formation of subjectivity. At the same time, the frame of reference moves outwards, from the world of interior states to encounter the passions on a public stage, thus reconnecting literary study with the history of political thought. In between the abstract theory of political ideas and the inward selves of literary history, lies a field of intersections waiting to be explored. The passions, like human nature itself, are infinitely variable, and provoke both literary experimentation and philosophical imagination. Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture thus makes new connections between embodiment, selfhood and the emotions in order to suggest both new models of the self and new models for interdisciplinary history.
The Philosophy of Religion is one result of the Early Modern Reformation movements, as competing theologies purported truth claims which were equal in strength and different in contents. Renaissance thought, from Humanism through philosophy of nature, contributed to the origin of the modern concepts of God. This book explores the continuity of philosophy of religion from late medieval thinkers through humanists to late Renaissance philosophers, explaining the growth of the tensions between the philosophical and theological views. Covering the work of Renaissance authors, including Lull, Salutati, Raimundus Sabundus, Plethon, Cusanus, Valla, Ficino, Pico, Bruno, SuA!rez, and Campanella, this book offers an important understanding of the current philosophy/religion and faith/reason debates and fills the gap between medieval and early modern philosophy and theology.
The essays in this volume cover the whole of the period in which Rome dominated the Mediterranean world. The belief shared by all the contributors is that the Roman empire is best understood from the standpoint of the Mediterranean world looking in to Rome, rather than from Rome looking out. The papers focus on the development of political institutions in Rome itself and in her empire, and on the nature of the relationship between Rome and her provincial subjects. They also discuss historiographical approaches to different kinds of source material, literary and documentary - including the major Roman historians, the evidence for the pre-Roman near east, and the Christian writers of later antiquity. This volume reflects the immense complexity of the political and cultural history of the ancient Mediterranean, from the late Republic to the age of Augustine.
This is the first English translation of the Venerable Bede's commentary on the book of Genesis. Dealing as it does with the biblical account of the creation of the world and of mankind, and of mankind's fall from grace and exile into the life of time, On Genesis offers essential insights into Bede's fundamental assumptions as a theologian, historian, and scientific cosmologist. Bede's role in laying the foundations of the modern world cannot be overemphasised. From his quantitative approach to questions of science to his introduction of the Anno Domini system of dating and his text-critical methods of biblical analysis, he anticipated and influenced modern ways of thinking. Bede regarded the opening chapters of Genesis as the foundation narrative of the world. From it Bede derived the theoretical basis for his scientific treatises and his notion of the English as a chosen people of God, which informs the Ecclesiastical History. This translation and introduction attempts to make Bede's commentary accessible to anyone with an interest in his work.
Across the nineteenth century, scholars in Britain, France and the German lands sought to understand their earliest ancestors: the Germanic and Celtic tribes known from classical antiquity, and the newly discovered peoples of prehistory. New fields - philology, archeology and anthropology - interacted, breaking down languages, unearthing artifacts, measuring skulls and recording the customs of "savage" analogues. This was a decidedly national process: disciplines institutionalized on national levels, and their findings seen to have deep implications for the origins of the nation and its "racial composition." However, this operated within broader currents. The wide spread of material and novelty of the methods meant that these approaches formed connections across Europe and beyond, even while national rivalries threatened to tear these networks apart. Race, Science and the Nation follows this tension, offering a simultaneously comparative, cross-national and multi-disciplinary history of the scholarly reconstruction of European prehistory. As well as showing how interaction between disciplines was key to their formation, it makes arguments of keen relevance to studies of racial thought and nationalism. It shows these researches often worked against attempts to present the chaotic multi-layered ancient eras as times of mythic origin. Instead, they argued that the modern nations of Europe were not only diverse, but were products of long processes of social development and "racial" fusion. This book therefore brings to light a formerly unstudied motif of nineteenth-century national consciousness, showing how intellectuals in the era of nation-building themselves drove an idea of their nations being "constructed" from a useable past.
Now in its second edition, Digital Contagions is the first book to offer a comprehensive and critical analysis of the culture and history of the computer virus. At a time when our networks arguably feel more insecure than ever, the book provides an overview of how our fears about networks are part of a more complex story of the development of digital culture. It writes a media archaeology of computer and network accidents that are endemic to the computational media ecology. Viruses, worms, and other software objects are not seen merely from the perspective of anti-virus research or practical security concerns, but as cultural and historical expressions that traverse a non-linear field from fiction to technical media, from net art to politics of software. Mapping the anomalies of network culture from the angles of security concerns, the biopolitics of computer systems, and the aspirations for artificial life in software, this second edition also pays attention to the emergence of recent issues of cybersecurity and new forms of digital insecurity. A new preface by Sean Cubitt is also provided.
"Burstein's The Essential Greek Historians is an excellent collection of texts representing the development of historiography in the ancient Greek world. Each text is presented in an engaging and readable translation, with an insightful introduction exploring the purposes behind its composition, the significance of its contribution to the growth of historiography as a literary genre, and the context in which its author thought and wrote. These texts include not only familiar favourites like Herodotus and Thucydides, but also sources such as The Parian Marble and Memnon's History of Heracleia, which give a broader and richer view of the ways in which Greeks engaged with history. In one economical volume, Burstein has created an indispensable introduction to the historical thought of the ancient Greeks. No student of Greek historiography should be without it." -- Erik Jensen, Salem State University. Includes an introduction, maps, and selections from Herodotus' The Histories, Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, Xenophon's The Hellenica, Aristotle's The Constitution of Athens, The Parian Marble, Polybius' The Histories, Memnon's History of Heracleia, Plutarch's Life of Alexander. See the full Table of Contents on the www.hackettpublishing.com book title page.
This reader presents essays that editor Victor Vitanza describes as "efforts at revisionary histories that are either quasi-traditional histories or radical subversive histories." They are influential works published over the past four decades by major rhetoricians and historians with radically different presumptions and challenges to the status quo of history. Their discussions present a full array of possible histories in terms of originations, classicisms, scientific objectivities, temporalities, literary criticisms, feminisms, modernity/post-modernity, aesthetics, and perpetually more and more contestations. Providing a forum for scholars' original voices as the discussions have developed over the decades, this collection is a unique and valuable text for advanced study on the history of rhetoric.
First Published in 1973. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
In historical terms, the Old Diplomacy is not really that old--many of its concepts and methods date to the mid-nineteenth century--while the practices of New Diplomacy emerged only a couple of generations later. Moreover, "Diplomacy 2.0" and other variants of the post-Cold War era do not depart significantly from their twentieth-century predecessor: their forms, particularly in technology, have changed, but their substance has not. In this succinct overview, historian Kenneth Weisbrode reminds us that to understand diplomatic transformations and their relevance to international affairs is to see diplomacy as an entrepreneurial art--and that, like most arts, it is adapted and re-adapted with reference to earlier forms. Diplomatic practice is always changing, and always continuous.
Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) occupies a unique place in 20th-century philosophy. His view that human beings are not rational but symbolic animals and his famous dispute with Martin Heidegger at Davos in 1929 are compelling alternatives to the deadlock between 'analytic' and 'continental' approaches to philosophy. An astonishing polymath, Cassirer's work pays equal attention to mathematics and natural science but also art, language, myth, religion, technology, and history. However, until now the importance of his work has largely been overlooked. In this outstanding introduction Samantha Matherne examines and assesses the full span of Cassirer's work. Beginning with an overview of his life and works she covers the following important topics: Cassirer's neo-Kantian background Philosophy of mathematics and natural science, including Cassirer's first systematic work, Substance and Function, and subsequent works, like Einstein's Theory of Relativity The problem of culture and the ground-breaking The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms Cassirer's ethical and political thought and his diagnosis of fascism in The Myth of the State Cassirer's influence and legacy. Including chapter summaries, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary of terms, this is an ideal introduction to Cassirer's thought for anyone coming to his work for the first time. It is essential reading for students in philosophy as well as related disciplines such as intellectual history, art history, politics, and literature.
This book is the first in-depth study of the way in which historians have dealt with the coming of the American Revolution and the formation of the US Constitution. The approach is thematic, examining how historians in different periods interpreted these events and their causes and, more contentiously, their meaning. Making accessible to modern readers the work of often-neglected early historians, this book examines how the emergence of history as a professional discipline led to new and competing versions of the history of the Revolution. It spans the entire period from the first generation of writers, whose ideas about history were shaped by the Enlightenment, to those of the twenty-first century who drew on the rich legacy provided by black studies, gender and women's studies, cultural studies and ethnohistory. This book will be an invaluable resource for all students and scholars of the American Revolution. -- .
This book is the first in-depth study of the way in which historians have dealt with the coming of the American Revolution and the formation of the US Constitution. The approach is thematic, examining how historians in different periods interpreted these events and their causes and, more contentiously, their meaning. Making accessible to modern readers the work of often-neglected early historians, this book examines how the emergence of history as a professional discipline led to new and competing versions of the history of the Revolution. It spans the entire period from the first generation of writers, whose ideas about history were shaped by the Enlightenment, to those of the twenty-first century who drew on the rich legacy provided by black studies, gender and women's studies, cultural studies and ethnohistory. This book will be an invaluable resource for all students and scholars of the American Revolution. -- . |
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