Preliminary Programme

Pedro de Madrazo, the son and the brother of the two most prominent directors of the Prado Museum (José de Madrazo and Federico de Madrazo), was the sole author of all museum catalogues published between 1843 and 1910. He was the member of the Royal Academies of Fine Arts and History, and a prolific writer. As I argue, Pedro de Madrazo's late-Romantic interpretation of Western and Spanish history and arts as two complementary channels through which National Spirit expressed itself influenced the ways in which the collection of the Prado Museum was interpreted throughout the second half of 19th century and at the beginning of 20th century. I will analyze the accounts of the Prado in Madrazo's letters, published speeches, articles, and Museum catalogues as the tools of transforming the Prado into a visual display of the author's historiographical theories. (Show less)

The paper examines historical scholarship and the production of history from the point of view of social, material, and epistemic practise. Drawing on the example of the collective project of a register of charters in Switzerland in the mid 19th century, it argues that historical scholarship must be understood as a practise essentially mediated by objects.

When the Swiss federal parliament decided to support the edition of a register of early Swiss charters in 1860, access to medieval sources suddenly became a public good. The «Schweizerische Urkundenregister» (1854-1877) turned dispersed sources into «Swiss charters» and heterogeneous actors into collaborators in a collective endeavour. The paper focusses on the historical «things» that where processed in the course of the project. It analyses the procedures of standardisation, aggregation, and decontextualisation that led to the production of new epistemic objects. It also looks at the role of the objectural features of the charters that were highlighted in the contexts of scholarly and societal legitimation of the project leading to the «Urkundenregister». The paper argues that changes in historical scholarship during the 19th century were not only of a discoursive character, but to a large extent brought about by new manners of organising historical work and new definitions of the objects historians had to work with. (Show less)

Long since challenged by history from below, the nation's position as the primary unit of historical analysis has more recently been brought into question through emphasis on transnational patterns and flows. The European Science Foundation's Project on the Writing of National History proposes to consider "national histories" in relation to "trans-European, global, and/or world histories." A broadly similar complicating of the nation's place can also be seen in North America. Where, however, European approaches treat the national and the transnational as at once interconnected and in their own spheres, Mexican, Quebec, English Canadian, and American move along a quite different track. Conceived in relation to heavily nationalized space (much of North America's history began in the context provided by particularist oppositions to imperial rule; was sustained in terms of vigorous nation- and state-building; became deeply imprinted by United States' expansionism and the counter-moves it generated; and remains strongly shaped by preoccupations with national maintenance and sovereign integrity), North American narratives generally continue to privilege the old orientation. The transnational appears, but is viewed either as a force managed (or resisted) in the name of local interest or preservation or as a source of national strength, power, and possibility. Attempts to locate and specify a European kind of transnationalism (a North American 'community') underscore the pre-eminence of the national: made in the face of evidentiary difficulties, these attempts either retreat to a weak version of the phenomenon or resort to argument by assertion, in both cases projecting the opposite of what they intend. European-North American representations of the national/transnational relationship can be compared, but - given the way those representations are contoured by gross institutional fact - comparison reveals difference. One sees - once again - that "[historical] stories, though constructions, are not arbitrary constructions." (Show less)

This paper focuses on recent developments in American historical writing on modern U.S. history (from the civil war to the present).
U.S. historians often speak of the fragmentation of American historical writing into a wide variety of subfields (divided by topic and methodological approach). This paper argues that far from being distinct, a present-minded focus is common to all the various subfields. This approach is intertwined with the various methodological debates. This is not presentism in the sense of simply connecting past and present (or judging the past by the present), but a desire to use history to influence America's future.
This present-mindedness is not remarked upon by historians assessing historiographical developments in modern American history.
This paper focuses initially on a selection of new subfields, to show the presence and influence of present-mindedness.
The paper then explores the causes of this present-minded approach, tracing its origins to the founding of the American historical profession.
The paper then compares American present-mindedness with recent historiography in Europe and around the world, to assess what is (and what is not) distinctive about the American example.
Finally, the paper considers why contemporary present-mindedness in American historical writing is somewhat constrained by comparison with previous generations. The paper also explores the benefits, or otherwise, of this characteristic of American historical writing. (Show less)

Ancient history and especially classical (Greek) Antiquity has played a prominent role in the nation-making processes in South-East Europe. The impact of ‘ancient Greece’ – taken both as body of historical knowledge and as a Western cultural icon – on 19th and 20th century Balkan nationalisms is not limited to modern Greece; the last century has seen an increase in manipulative re-elaborations of the history of Ancient Greece and attempts for alternative Balkan ‘readings.’
I wish to explore the intertwining of claims of truth and historical myths about Antiquity in Balkan national historiographies, and the ways they are mirrored in elaborate cultural products that help rooting them in popular, or mass, consciousness.
The argument is drawn from three distinctive fields:
a) Balkan parochial historiographies of Antiquity (Bulgarian ‘thracology’, Illyrian studies in Albania, the disputes around the name and history of Ancient Macedonia).
b) Literary fiction in defense of ‘the historical truth’ and ‘correcting’ scientific work (the novels of Albanian writer Ismail Kadare).
c) Ethnographical data about religious visionaries claiming to “see into the Past” and to “know History” (examples from socialist Bulgaria and Yugoslav Macedonia).
The paper raises the following theoretical issues:
- Nationalism and the technology of transformation of cultural and symbolic capital (pace P. Bourdieu) into social and political one
- From ‘objective knowledge’ to folk truths: negotiating ‘historical Truth’ in everyday life
- From popular appropriations of high knowledge to popular representations of the national Self: the work of cultural intimacy (pace M. Herzfeld)
- Correlations between the acquisition of national consciousness and the production of national-historical myths (Show less)