Dear all

 

You may be interested to hear that we are not the only CHAT – Roehampton University also has one: its Centre for Research in History and Theory (CHAT). They have a conference coming up on 28 February, covering public histories. Details follow:

 

Public Histories Past and Present

 

Saturday 28 February 2009

 

 

In Britain public history has become a familiar term only in the past ten years, but history-writing has fulfilled public purposes since the earliest formal composition about the past. The intention of this one-day conference is to explore some of the public purposes which have given shape to historical work in the past and today, and to explore the relationship which historians have had with their wider audience. We envisage a set of papers which will be contrasted in terms of period and society.

 

History-writing has served to commemorate the dead and to enhance the prestige of the ruler. It has promoted patriotism and xenophobia. It has underwritten civic values. It has sought to extract lessons from disasters such as war and invasion. It has promoted supranational identity and international solidarity. It has offered historical perspective on social and political problems without number. It has sought to raise the consciousness of excluded groups. The academic profession of history originated in a very self-conscious rejection of every kind of presentism: history was justified to patrons and students as cultural enrichment, sufficient to itself. But Ranke’s neutrality was quickly compromised by the creeping nationalism of his Prussian successors. Notwithstanding repeated calls for academic detachment, twentieth-century historians from G.M. Trevelyan to E.J. Hobsbawm were frequently to be found outside the ivory tower. Within the past generation women’s history has established an alternative model of the politically engaged historian. The demands of social relevance have informed our professional practice more than is sometime admitted.

 

Today the growing interest in public history provides a focus for reassessing these engagements with the extra-academic world. Is history-writing of this kind mere tokenism, or has it on occasion shifted the ground of public opinion? What have been the most insistent expectations laid on historians? And has public purpose proved incompatible with professional standards?

 

Papers are invited on the public role of history-writing from Ancient Greece to the present. Both case-studies and general reflections are welcome. 

 

Contact is Sarah Pennell, at [log in to unmask].