PART ONE: FOUNDATIONS: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS FOR KNOWLEDGE OF THE
PAST - Nancy Partner
Modernity and History: The Professional Discipline
The Turn towards ′Science′: Historians Delivering Untheorized Truth
- Michael Bentley
The Implications of Empiricism for History - Lutz Raphael
The Case for Historical Imagination: Defending the Human Factor and
Narrative - Jan van der Dussen
The Annales School: Variations on Realism, Methods and Time -
Joseph Tendler
Intellectual History: From Ideas to Meanings - Donald R Kelley
Social History: A New Kind of History - Brian Lewis
Postmodernism: The Linguistic Turn and Historical Knowledge
The Work of Hayden White I: Mimesis, Figuration, and the Writing of
History - Robert Doran
The Work of Hayden White II: Defamiliarizing Narrative - Kalle
Pihlainen
Derrida and Deconstruction: Challenges to the Transparency of
Language - Robert M Stein
The Return of Rhetoric - Hans Kellner
Michel Foucault: The Unconscious of History and Culture - Clare
O′Farrell
History as Text: Narrative Theory and History - Ann Rigney
The Boundaries of History and Fiction - Ann Curthoys and John
Docker
PART TWO: APPLICATIONS: THEORY-INTENSIVE AREAS OF HISTORY - Nancy
Partner
The Newest Social History: Crisis and Renewal - Brian Lewis
Women′s History/Feminist History - Judith P Zinsser
Gender I: From Women′s History to Gender History - Bonnie Smith
Gender II: Masculinity Acquires a History - Karen Harvey
Sexuality and History - Amy Richlin
Psychoanalysis and the Making of History - Michael Roper
New National Narratives - Kevin Foster
Cultural Studies and History - Gilbert B Rodman
Memory: Witness, Experience, Collective Meaning - Patrick H
Hutton
Postcolonial Theory and History - Benjamin Zachariah
PART THREE: CODA. POST-POSTMODERNISM: DIRECTIONS AND INTERROGATIONS
- Nancy Partner
Post-Positivist Realism: Regrounding Representation - John H
Zammito
Historical Experience beyond the Linguistic Turn - Frank
Ankersmit
Photographs: Reading the Image for History - Judith Keilbach
Digital Information: ′Let a hundred flowers bloom…′ Is Digital a
Cultural Revolution? - Valerie Johnson and David Thomas
Recovering the Self: Agency after Deconstruction - David Gary
Shaw
The Fundamental Things Apply: Aristotle′s Narrative Theory and the
Classical Origins of Postmodern History - Nancy Partner
This compendium of new essays on theory of history (rather than
history′s theory) is the very model of what a scientific handbook
(an honorable scholarly genre which has been much degraded of late
by commercialization) ought to be. The problems which motivated the
interest in theory of history from the 1930s and 40s down to just
yesterday have now been pretty much assimilated to a new lingua
franca of metahistorical discourse. A new generation of scholars
can now treat as what goes without saying many of the
"undecidables" of the older generations′ discourses. The essays
display an openness to innovation and manifest a kind of authority
which stand above both polemics and apologetics. All of the
relevant topics, themes, debates, methodological issues, and images
of the "theory wars" are taken account of--I counted twenty-six
such, from "linguistic turn" through "gender" and "postcolonial" to
"fiction" and "causality"-- even-handedly, insightfully, and
responsibly. The documentation is impressive, the footnotes
pertinent, full, and informative, the bibliographies comprehensive.
The whole bears the imprint of the scholarly styles of its editors,
Professors Partner and Foot. Anyone who knows their scholarship
will expect nothing but the highest standards brought to anything
they study. I was most impressed by the way in which the essays
taken as a whole extend the field of historical studies to include
all of the other disciplines in the human, social, and natural
sciences which take "the past" and not only "history" as objects of
study. This is an indispensable Handbook for anyone who has a
professional or even an "amateur" interest in the study of the
past.
Hayden White
University Professor, Emeritus, of the History of Consciousness, in
the University of California and Sometime Consultant Professor of
Comparative Literature and German Studies, Stanford University The
editors have assembled a large and outstanding group of historians
and other theorists who examine and represent theories of
historical knowledge from every angle. The collection is
comprehensive, scholarly, and full of new insights.
David Carr
Professor Emeritus, Emory University The challenges of the use of
theory in history is analysed and interrogated in significant and
exciting ways in this work. In drawing on the insights of leading
scholars, this indispensible volume broadens the parameters of our
investigation of the past and deepens our interpretation and
understanding of historical knowledge.
Joy Damousi
Professor of History, University of Melbourne Nancy Partner and
Sarah Foot have brought together a comprehensive and up-to-date
collection of essays on historical theory. The special feature is
that more than half the contributions are written by working
historians with their feet on the ground. The book will be
invaluable both to students of historiography and seasoned
practitioners.
John Tosh
Professor of History, University of Roehampton This is an important
overview and critical analysis of the present state of history
writing. Starting with history′s modernist foundations in the 19th
century, the Handbook succinctly explains how the rise of
postmodernism has brought about our present-day post-postmodernist
predicament with its broad variety of historical genres.
Chris Lorenz
Professor of German Historical Culture and Historical Theory, VU
University Amsterdam and Amsterdam University College
This is almost certainly the most thorough and informative
compendium of historical theory and philosophy of history available
on the market today. It is to be recommended without qualification
to all serious students of philosophy of history, including those
who think they already know something about the subject (they will
soon discover, like me, that they have a lot to learn). Containing
29 articles or chapters, all written by experts in the field, it
covers subjects as diverse as empiricism, the historical
imagination, narrative history, feminist history, the history of
sexuality, cultural studies, memory, post-colonial theory,
historical experience, and the works of Collingwood, Hayden White,
Derrida and Foucault.
*Alexander Lyon Macfie*
The Sage Handbook of Historical Theory offers us 29 article-length
essays on a wide variety of topics written by recognized and
respected experts. Most are historians reflecting on their own work
and practices, or those of others. They tell us about methods
(empirical, scientific, psychoanalytic, digital), schools (The
Historical School, Annales), lots of individuals
(Collingwood,Hayden White, Derrida, Foucault), applications (social
history, gender history). I found these essays satisfying,
informative, and, in cases where I was pretty familiar with the
subject, quite reliable. This is the sort of book that can be
consulted by the scholar again and again as needs and questions
arise. To be sure, topics may arise that are not covered here (I
thought of Social Darwinism, and environmental history), but
the editors of such a collection must be selective and
obviously cannot cover everything.
*David Carr, Emory University USA*
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