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FORGOTTEN HISTORIES AND UNCERTAIN LEGACIES

Kevin C. Karnes

in Music, Criticism, and the Challenge of History: Shaping Modern Musical Thought in Late Nineteenth Century Vienna

This chapter offers a substantial reevaluation of Hanslick's work by situating it at the center of late 19th-century debates about the future of the discipline he helped to found. Hired by the ... More

This chapter offers a substantial reevaluation of Hanslick's work by situating it at the center of late 19th-century debates about the future of the discipline he helped to found. Hired by the University of Vienna in 1856 to advance an empiricist movement in art-historical study inspired by the work of the philosopher Johann Friedrich Herbart, Hanslick veered sharply from the Herbartian path within a decade of his appointment. Giving up his attempts to expand his formalist treatise On the Musically Beautiful into a systematic aesthetics in the 1860s, he determined to dedicate himself to the study of cultural history in the post-Hegelian tradition of August Wilhelm Ambros, as evidenced in his second book, History of Concert Life in Vienna (1869). The chapter concludes by arguing that it was Hanslick's abandonment of Herbartianism, rather than his early formalism, that defined his reputation among university colleagues during the final quarter of the century.Less

History Writing as Reconstruction: The Beginnings of Holocaust Research from the Perspective of Its Victims

Laura Jockusch

in Collect and Record!: Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe

The conclusion examines similarities and differences among the featured commissions and documentation centers and evaluates their importance for Holocaust studies. It argues that part of the reason ... More

The conclusion examines similarities and differences among the featured commissions and documentation centers and evaluates their importance for Holocaust studies. It argues that part of the reason why the early postwar documentation initiatives did not receive the attention of historians who were not survivors themselves was that their methods at the time were anathema to the rules of academic history writing which came to dominate the study of the Holocaust. For decades, the latter remained perpetrator-focused and regime-centered, taking a “top-down” perspective on the Jewish catastrophe. By contrast, the survivors’ popular and interdisciplinary approach relied on testimony and memory and focused on writing the history of everyday life and death of European Jews under Nazi rule from the bottom up. Only in the past two decades did similar approaches enter the academic study of the Holocaust and historians begin to consider both victim and perpetrator source to write an integrated history of the Holocaust.Less

Introduction

Dipesh Chakrabarty

in The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire of Truth

The Introduction explains why and how this book came to be written and introduces Sarkar and Sardesai, the two main historians at the center of the narrative. It situates their historiographical ... More

The Introduction explains why and how this book came to be written and introduces Sarkar and Sardesai, the two main historians at the center of the narrative. It situates their historiographical endeavours and debates with their contemporaries on historical methods within some general propositions regarding the tensions that characterize what may be described as the two lives of the academic discipline of history: its regulated life in educational and research institutions (described here as the discipline’s “cloistered” life); and its relatively unregulated life in the world of “amateur” historians, here described as history’s “public life.” From a general discussion of the distinction proposed between the “public” and “cloistered” lives of all social-science disciplines, this section argues that history remains specifically vulnerable to the pressures emanating from its “public life,” and proposes that methodological debates in history should be viewed not only in their own abstract terms but also in the context of the tensions that exist between the two lives of the discipline, something that varies across time and geographical regions. This section also explains the colonial context in which Sarkar and other nationalist-minded Indian historians debated various versions of history in public, which shaped the academic discipline of history.Less

Darwinism: How Much Does It Explain?

David Fergusson

in Faith and Its Critics: A Conversation

This chapter explores the scope of neo-Darwinism in relation to the history of life on earth, and asks whether its explanatory power can extend to religious belief and activity. First, it discusses ... More

This chapter explores the scope of neo-Darwinism in relation to the history of life on earth, and asks whether its explanatory power can extend to religious belief and activity. First, it discusses the compatibility of design and evolution. It argues that Darwin's case illustrates the fusion of personal and intellectual factors in one's faith position, and raises the question of whether one's beliefs can ever reach a stasis or become altogether free of incoherence. Second, it turns to the application of evolutionary psychology or cognitive science to the phenomenon of religion. It suggests that cognitive science has an important contribution to make towards an understanding of religion.Less

Life: Genesis of a Metaphysical Paradigm

Davide Tarizzo

in Life: A Modern Invention

Examines the emergence and the metaphysical meaning of “autonomous life” in the fields of philosophy (Kant, Fichte, Schelling) and of biology (from Darwin to Dawkins), then explaining where, why and ... More

Examines the emergence and the metaphysical meaning of “autonomous life” in the fields of philosophy (Kant, Fichte, Schelling) and of biology (from Darwin to Dawkins), then explaining where, why and how this metaphysical concept is still at work in contemporary thought (Freud, Canguilhem, Dennett).Less

Sexuality and Sexual Orientation: Learning or Biology?

Jacques Balthazart

in The Biology of Homosexuality

This chapter reviews the various theories that have been advanced to explain homosexuality from an environmental perspective and shows why these theories, although they are still widespread, are not ... More

This chapter reviews the various theories that have been advanced to explain homosexuality from an environmental perspective and shows why these theories, although they are still widespread, are not satisfactory and are not supported by experimental evidence. The arguments presented here concern exclusively homosexual orientation as defined in Chapter 1: exclusive or preferential sexual attraction for persons of the same sex. It considers psychoanalytic theories, theories based on learning derived from behaviorism, and theories based on “social constructivism”. It argues that the evolutionary history of life on earth means that we can find evidence of the causes of human behavior through the study of similar behaviors in other animals, and the role of neurons in initiating and controlling our actions.Less

Curriculum Reforms in World War II Chicago

Ian Rocksborough-Smith

in Black Public History in Chicago: Civil Rights Activism from World War II into the Cold War

In Chicago, many African American pubic-history activists initially connected their work to struggles for racial justice partly in the tradition of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and ... More

In Chicago, many African American pubic-history activists initially connected their work to struggles for racial justice partly in the tradition of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). In an effort to continue the public-history traditions of the ASNLH (such as Negro History Week, which later became Black History Week or Month), chapter 1 outlines how Chicago black public schoolteachers and some of their white allies took initiatives to promote black-history curriculum reforms in the context of wartime America. This chapter of the book examines the curriculum-reform projects of South Side Chicago teachers, like Madeline Morgan Stratton Morris and her husband, Samuel Stratton, who continued the pre<EN>-Cold War roots of the black-history movement in Chicago.Less

Making News with Newspaper Columns

Burnis R. Morris

in Carter G. Woodson: History, the Black Press, and Public Relations

As an opinion journalist, Woodson wrote hundreds of newspaper columns on a variety of subjects. Some involved personal feuds. Others involved promotion of books he was publishing through Associated ... More

As an opinion journalist, Woodson wrote hundreds of newspaper columns on a variety of subjects. Some involved personal feuds. Others involved promotion of books he was publishing through Associated Publishers, his publishing firm, and his history movement through the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. He also engaged readers on politics and an array of international issues. This chapter explores the themes of the columns for their news and promotional value and provides a rare listing of all his known newspaper bylines.Less

Modernity: The Threshold of Autonomy

Davide Tarizzo

in Life: A Modern Invention

Considers the emergence and the meaning of “autonomy” in modern philosophy, by paying special attention to the Kantian turn and its aftermath.

Us: On the Use and Abuse of Life for History

Davide Tarizzo

in Life: A Modern Invention

Considers the repercussions of such a metaphysical framework in political history, with special emphasis on Nazism and contemporary trends in political theory and practices

School Bell Song: “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in the Lives of Children in the Segregated South

Imani Perry

in May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem

This chapter provides a detailed discussion of the curriculum, ritual, teachers organizations and culture of African American schools in the segregated South with a particular focus on how the song ... More

This chapter provides a detailed discussion of the curriculum, ritual, teachers organizations and culture of African American schools in the segregated South with a particular focus on how the song Lift Every Voice and Sing was integrated into daily practices in the lives of children.Less

“Towards a Nomothetic Paleontology”: The MBL Model and Stochastic Paleontology

David Sepkoski

in Rereading the Fossil Record: The Growth of Paleobiology as an Evolutionary Discipline

The study and modeling of the history of diversity over time motivated a methodological question: how reliable is the fossil record, and how can that reliability be tested? These problems became the ... More

The study and modeling of the history of diversity over time motivated a methodological question: how reliable is the fossil record, and how can that reliability be tested? These problems became the core of analytical paleobiology, and represented a continuation and a consolidation of the themes examined thus far in the history of paleobiology. Ultimately, this focus led paleobiologists to ground-breaking quantitative studies of the interplay of rates of origination and extinction of taxa through time, the role of background and mass extinctions in the history of life, the survivorship of individual taxa, and the modeling of historical patterns of diversity. These questions became the central components of an emerging paleobiological theory of macroevolution. This chapter explores the early stages of this development in paleobiology by examining the emergence of a new, clearly-articulated agenda: the often-expressed desire to construct a “nomothetic paleontology.” This phrase originated first in an important sequence of papers that sought to develop a stochastic, equilibrial simulation of evolutionary dynamics over time—what came to be known as the MBL model—and quickly became a rallying cry for the new approach to paleobiology. The term “nomothetic” essentially means “law-producing”. The chapter also outlined some of the essential features of this approach.Less

H. G. Bronn and the History of Nature

Sander Gliboff

in H.G. Bronn, Ernst Haeckel, and the Origins of German Darwinism: A Study in Translation and Transformation

Heinrich Georg Bronn developed his approach to the history of life in Handbuch einer Geschichte der Natur (Handbook of a history of nature) in the 1840s, as well as in the mature reformulation of his ... More

Heinrich Georg Bronn developed his approach to the history of life in Handbuch einer Geschichte der Natur (Handbook of a history of nature) in the 1840s, as well as in the mature reformulation of his theories in 1858. This approach adhered to the ideals of Wissenschaft that Bronn had been developing throughout his career. Bronn was also searching for multiple and preferably quantifiable measures of progress and perfection that he could use in paleontology. This chapter examines Bronn’s intellectual commitments in order to explain his interpretation of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and the issues he raised in response to it. It first considers Bronn’s views on the principle of adaptation and the external causes of change before turning to his assumptions about law and order in nature, along with his experience of individuality and variation and his notion of the evolution of species. It also discusses his ideas about the laws and forces of morphology.Less

The Densimeter: The First Flourish of Animal and Plant Life: A Historical Inquest

Alexandre Meinesz

in How Life Began: Evolution's Three Geneses

This chapter discusses the following topics: the four sources of evidence for the reconstruction of the history of life; the first two billion years of the evolution of plants and animals; the dawn ... More

This chapter discusses the following topics: the four sources of evidence for the reconstruction of the history of life; the first two billion years of the evolution of plants and animals; the dawn of unicellular animals and plants; the emergence of organisms visible to the unaided eye; the demands of life in open water; and present-day descendants of microscopic subfloating cells.Less

Candide, Jurassic Park, and Noah

Alexandre Meinesz

in How Life Began: Evolution's Three Geneses

This chapter begins with a discussion of Voltaire's most famous tale, Candide, ou l'optimism, published in 1759. The story of Candide is a long series of mishaps, calamities, and catastrophes endured ... More

This chapter begins with a discussion of Voltaire's most famous tale, Candide, ou l'optimism, published in 1759. The story of Candide is a long series of mishaps, calamities, and catastrophes endured during an extended voyage through Europe, America, and the Caribbean, during which Candide constantly questions his worldview. The multiple disastrous, unexpected, life-altering events that seemed to follow Candide on his journey were used by Voltaire to call attention to the fragility of existence. The chapter then considers the film Jurassic Park and theories for the extinction of dinosaurs. This is followed by a discussion of the importance of cataclysmic events and their crucial impact on the history of life.Less

Epilogue

Patrick Forterre

in Microbes from Hell

In the epilogue, the author once again emphasizes the importance that microbes from hell have played in the history of life. The author then wonder why it is important to retrace the most ancient ... More

In the epilogue, the author once again emphasizes the importance that microbes from hell have played in the history of life. The author then wonder why it is important to retrace the most ancient history of life on our planet and more generally why fundamental research is essential for our society. This is illustrated by the history of William Gilbert, who started working on electric phenomena in the sixteen century, at a time when nobody could have imagine the future impact of his work. In conclusion the author reminds us that science is a true pleasure when it aims is to uncover the secrets of nature.Less

The Black History Movement during the Depression

David A. Varel

in The Scholar and the Struggle: Lawrence Reddick's Crusade for Black History and Black Power

This chapter explores Reddick’s pioneering work in the fledgling field of black history. During the 1930s, Reddick worked as a professor of history at Kentucky State College and Dillard University, ... More

This chapter explores Reddick’s pioneering work in the fledgling field of black history. During the 1930s, Reddick worked as a professor of history at Kentucky State College and Dillard University, and he took a leading role in the black fraternity Phi Beta Sigma. He also completed his PhD in history from the University of Chicago, where he studied under the Lost Cause scholar Avery O. Craven. While tracking Reddick’s activities across these institutions, special focus is on Reddick’s contributions to Carter Woodson’s Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Reddick gathered the testimonies of former slaves and influenced the larger effort by the Works Progress Administration, published a landmark historiographical article in the Journal of Negro History, completed an innovative dissertation on the role of white newspapers in New Orleans in sowing divisions and helping provoke the Civil War, and documented racial discrimination at libraries, archives, journals, and conferences.Less