The Institute of Historical Research has now reprinted selected classic lectures, each with a short introduction by an eminent historian from the University of London. This commemorative volume provides a fascinating insight into the development of the discipline of history over the last century, revealing some significant changes in approach and emphasis as well as some surprising continuities. The Creighton Century is an invaluable guide to students of historiography, and a chance to relive some of the great lectures of the past 100 years, including those by Donald Coleman, Eric Hobsbawm, R.I. Moore and Sir Keith Thomas.
This book provides a broad perspective of the functioning, evolution, and dynamics of the rule of law in Brazil. It stresses not only how the rule of law has developed in the legal system, but also how the political institutions and extra-legal organisations have transformed its foundations. The rule of law is not a simple concept when it comes to defining the political, economic, and legal developments of a country like Brazil. Similar to many other Latin American countries, Brazil is a young democracy struggling with its longstanding extractive institutions and entrenched interests. It features, however, one of Latin America's richest constitutional moments, when civil society actively participated in drafting the most democratic constitution in the country's history. Brazil has since strengthened its institutions and the rule of law, but the road toward consolidating them has been challenged by inequality and the legacies of that authoritarian past. The book explores how Brazilian democracy has dealt with the high levels of social inequality and the authoritarian mindset that still play a big role in its fate, and asks whether the country's democratic achievements and institutional framework are sufficiently strong to enforce the rule of law as an imperative for Brazil's development, especially in times when the country is most in need of them.
With its innovative format, Debating New Approaches to History addresses issues currently at the top of the discipline's theoretical and methodological agenda. In its chapters, leading historians of both older and younger generations from across the Western world and beyond discuss and debate the main problems and challenges that historians are facing today. Each chapter is followed by a critical commentary from another key scholar in the field and the author's response. The volume looks at topics such as the importance and consequences of the 'digital turn' in history (what will history writing be like in a digital age?), the challenge of posthumanist theory for history writing (how do we write the history of non-humans?) and the possibilities of moving beyond traditional sources in history and establishing a dialogue with genetics and neurosciences (what are the perspectives and limits of the so-called 'neurohistory'?). It also revisits older debates in history which remain crucial, such as what the gender approach can offer to historical research or how to write history on a global scale. Debating New Approaches to History does not just provide a useful overview of the new approaches to history it covers, but also offers insights into current historical debates and the process of historical method in the making. It demonstrates how the discipline of history has responded to challenges in society – such as digitalization, globalization and environmental concerns – as well as in humanities and social sciences, such as the 'material turn', 'visual turn' or 'affective turn'. This is a key volume for all students of historiography wanting to keep their finger on the pulse of contemporary thinking in historical research.
The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine celebrates the richness and variety of medical history around the world. In recent decades, the history of medicine has emerged as a rich and mature sub-discipline within history, but the strength of the field has not precluded vigorous debates about methods, themes, and sources. Bringing together over thirty international scholars, this handbook provides a constructive overview of the current state of these debates, and offers new directions for future scholarship. There are three sections: the first explores the methodological challenges and historiographical debates generated by working in particular historical ages; the second explores the history of medicine in specific regions of the world and their medical traditions, and includes discussion of the `global history of medicine'; the final section analyses, from broad chronological and geographical perspectives, both established and emerging historical themes and methodological debates in the history of medicine.
In recent years, western discourse about the Balkans, or “balkanism,” has risen in prominence. Characteristically, this strand of research sidelines the academic input in the production of western representations and Balkan self-understanding. Looking at the Balkans from the vantage point of “balkanism” has therefore contributed to its further marginalization as an object of research and the evisceration of its agency. This book reverses the perspective and looks at the Balkans primarily inside-out, from within the Balkans towards its “self” and the outside world, where the west is important but not the sole referent. The book unravels attempts at regional identity-building and construction of regional discourses across various generations and academic subcultures, with the aim of reconstructing the conceptualizations of the Balkans that have emerged from academically embedded discursive practices and political usages. It thus seeks to reinstate the subjectivity of “the Balkans” and the responsibility of the Balkan intellectual elites for the concept and the images it conveys. The book then looks beyond the Balkans, inviting us to rethink the relationship between national and transnational (self-)representation and the communication between local and exogenous – Western, Central and Eastern European – concepts and definitions more generally. It thus contributes to the ongoing debates related to the creation of space and historical regions, which feed into rethinking the premises of the “new area studies.” Beyond Balkanism: The Scholarly Politics of Region Making will interest researchers and students of transnationalism, politics, historical geography, border and area studies.
Every year, the Bibliography catalogues the most important new publications, historiographical monographs, and journal articles throughout the world, extending from prehistory and ancient history to the most recent contemporary historical studies. Within the systematic classification according to epoch, region, and historical discipline, works are also listed according to author’s name and characteristic keywords in their title.
Ever increasing research evidence continues to mount. Having started my research on the connection of the Hydraulis to the roots of the more recent Industrial Revolution at the University of St. Gallen in 1989 over 30 years ago, I continue to identify additional support for it. We do not know whether the beginnings of an Industrial Revolution in Hellenistic Greece would have continued if not cut off by the Roman Empire's conquests. Neither do we know whether the more recent (latent) Industrial Revolution could have risen up again in the 17th-century without Vitruvius or Hero of Alexander's preserved writings. The point of this book is to emphasize with new findings that had the Romans not stopped the growth of science and technology in the Hellenistic Period that it would have likely continued to develop into a full-fledged Industrial Revolution. Secondly, the more recent Industrial Revolution borrowed heavily on the technology and science of the Hellenistic Period. In the true sense of the "Renaissance" 17th-century industrial progress largely picked up the written remnants of Antiquity to be able to continue on after a centuries long caesura.
With reference to artefactual archaeological evidence and surviving manuscript documentation of the Hydraulis, I find that a new dialectical discussion might better analyze and address the underlying understanding of the Steam Engines' longitudinal provenance, and therefore, requires a redefinition the origins of Industrial Revolutions themselves from Ctesibius to the exploration of Mars.
Now available in paperback for the first time, Jewish Writers of the Twentieth Century is both a comprehensive reference resource and a springboard for further study. This volume: examines canonical Jewish writers, less well-known authors of Yiddish and Hebrew, and emerging Israeli writers includes entries on figures as diverse as Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Tristan Tzara, Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, Nadine Gordimer, and Woody Allen contains introductory essays on Jewish-American writing, Holocaust literature and memoirs, Yiddish writing, and Anglo-Jewish literature provides a chronology of twentieth-century Jewish writers. Compiled by expert contributors, this book contains over 330 entries on individual authors, each consisting of a biography, a list of selected publications, a scholarly essay on their work and suggestions for further reading.
The first ever archaeologically based study of the turbulent period of English history often known as the 'Anarchy' of King Stephen's reign in the mid-twelfth century, covering battlefields and conflict landscapes, arms, armour and material culture, fortifications and the church.
