TOWARDS A NEW CULTURAL HISTORY OF EASTERN AND CENTRAL EUROPE. CRITICAL ISSUES
AND REAPPRAISALS
ReSET CHALLENGES PROJECT
2011 SUMMER SESSION
Beyond all possible “turns,” or What is a cultural history today?
(10-23 July, 2011; Lviv – Slavske, Ukraine)
I. Introductory readings
A random selection of introductory texts on cultural history to be consulted by all project
participants before the first session:
Peter Burke, What is Cultural History? (Cambridge 2004)
Victoria Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, "Introduction", Beyond the Cultural Turn (Berkeley 1999), 132;
William Sewell, "The Concept(s)of Culture", Beyond the Cultural Turn (Berkeley 1999), 35-61;
Nicholas Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry Ortner, "Introduction", Culture / Power / History. A
Reader in Contemporary Social Theory (Princeton 1994)
II. Place and meaning of cultural history in the university curricula (roundtable)
This is the first of roundtables at which project members can share their experiences of teaching
and researching topics related to cultural history in the universities of the region.
Гуревич А.Я. “Историческая антропология: проблемі социальной и культурной истории”,
Вестник АН СССР, 1989, № 7, с. 71-78.
Jutta Scherrer, "Kulturologija. Russia's Search for Identity", Budapest Review of Books, 0104/2002, pp. 5-11
III. Cultural History versus Memory Politics (roundtable):
"Выбор историка. Интервью с историками Мариной Румянцевой и Романом Козаковым"
www.polit.ru/science/2011/06/09/history.html
А.Миллер, "Историческая политика в Восточной Европе начала XXI в." (draft version)
IV. Cultural history and post-modernism
What was the relationship, if any, between postmodernism and cultural history?
Is postmodernism over? Is there a postmodern history in East-Central Europe?
How do we explain current backlash against "postmodernism" in the region's historiography?
How did postmodernism change the way we think about history?
Keith Jenkins, "On Disobidient Histories", in Rethinking History 7:3 (2003), 367-385
1
V. Shifting Fields of the Historical Inquiry. From Social to Cultural and Back
(Andriy Zayarnyuk)
1) Multiple origins of English-speaking social history:
British Marxism;
sociology;
the 1960s;
2) The heyday of social history;
3) Multiple origins of “new cultural history”:
- anthropology;
- linguistic structuralism;
- poststructuralism;
4) Eclecticism?
Eley, Geoff, A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society. Ann Arbor:
university of Michigan Press, 2005, 115-182.
Eley, Geoff and Nield, Keith. The Future of Class in History: What’s Left of the Social? (Ann
Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2007), 81-138.
Sewell, William H., Jr. Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation. Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 2005, 318-371
VI. Making sense under communism. Microhistory, historical anthropology and practice of
domination (Thomas Lindenberger)
S.Kott, "The Gestures and the Spirit of Giving in the Firms of the GDR";
J.Palmowski, Inventing a Socialist Nation. Heimat and the Politics of Everyday Life in the GDR,
1945-1990, chapter 1
VII. Introduction to the transnational paradigm of historiography (Philipp Ther)
Andreas Kappeler, “From an Ethnonational to a Multiethnic to a Transntional Ukrainian
History”, in A Laboratory of Transnational History. Ukraine and Recent Ukrainian
Historiography, ed.by G.Kasianov and Ph.Ther (Budapest 2009), 52-80
Philipp Ther, "The Transnational Paradigm of Historiography and Its Potential for Ukrainian
History", in A Laboratory of Transnational History. Ukraine and Recent Ukrainian
Historiography, ed.by G.Kasianov and Ph.Ther (Budapest 2009), 81-114.
VIII. Cultural studies of/in Eastern Europe (Yaroslav Hrytsak)
1 seminar. Yaroslav Hrytsak, "History of Names: A Case of Constructing a National Historical
Memory in Galicia, 1830-1930s", Jahrbuecher fuer Geschichte Osteuropas 49 (2001), 163-177;
2 seminar. Yaroslav Hrytsak, Victor Susak, "Constructing a National City: Case of Lviv";
2
3 seminar. Ronald Inglehart, Wayne Baker, "Modernization, Cultural Change, and the
Persistance of Traditional Values",
American Sociological Review, vol.65, no.1 (February 2000), 19-51;
Peter Temin, "Is It Kosher to Talk About Culture?", The Journal of Economic History, vol. 57,
no. 2 (1997), 267-287;
Masaki Taniguchi, "A Time Machine: "New Evidence of Post-Materialist Value Change",
International Political Science Review, vol. 27, no. 4 (2006), 405-425;
Marc Egnal, [Rev.] "The Wealth and Powerty of Nations. Why Some Are So Rich, and Some So
Poor by D.Landes", The Journal of American History, vol.85, no. 4 (1999), 1558-1559
IX. Political, intellectual and cultural histories. Legacies and perspectives
(Maciej Janowski)
Johan Huizinga, Task of Cultural History (fragment)
Arthur Lovenjoy, "The great chain of being" (fragment)
Peter Burke, "What is cultural history" (fragment)
X. Transnational memory (Martina Steer)
Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts. Urban Palumpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford
2003), pp. 1-29;
Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of
Decolonization (Stanford 2009), pp. 1-29
Pierre Nora, Between memory and history: les lieux de memoire, Representations, 7-25
Alon Confino, Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method, in: The American
Historical Review, Vol. 102, No. 5. (Dec., 1997),1386-1403
XI. How to write a history of Carpathian mountains? (Maciej Janowski)
A personal attempt to put politics, ecology, culture and society together into one narrative.
Roderick Peattie, "Mountain Geography" (fragment)
Jacek Kozak, "Forest Cover Change in the Western Carpathians" ("Mountain Research and
Development", Nov. 2003)
Vasyl Inkin, Silske suspilstvo, p. 1-14.
Interview with D. Worsterem
3
XII. New studies on the current tendencies in historiography: critical reappraisals (Leonid
Zashkilnyak)
Ewa Domańska. „Perspektywy badań historycznych w Polsce wobec zmian we współczesnej
humanistyce”, in Historyk wobec źródeł. Historiografia klasyczna i nowe propozycje
metodologiczne / praca zbiorowa pod redakcją Jolanty Kolbuszewskiej i Rafała Stobeckiego.
Łódź: PTH, 2010. S.115-130.
Hayden White. „Polityka interpretacji historycznej”, in Porównania. Czasopismo poświęcone
zagadnieniom komparatywistyki literackiej oraz studiom interdyscyplinarnym. Poznań: Uniw.
im.Adama Mickiewicza, 2010. Rocznik VII. S.7-32. (translation: H.White, The Politics of
Historical Interpretation. Discipline and De-Sublimation”, in Critical Inquiry (1982), vol. 9, no.
1, pp. 113-137).
Further readings:
Карлос Антонио Агирре Рохас. Историография в 20 веке. История и историки между
1848 и 2025 годами. Москва: Кругъ, 2008, 164 с.
Ewa Domańska. Mikrohistorie. Spotkania w międzyświatach. Poznań: Wydawnictwo
Poznańskie, 2005. 338 s.
Ewa Domańska. Historie niekonwencjonalne. Reflekcje o przeszłości w nowej humanistyce.
Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 2006, 324 s.
Wojciech Wrzosek. O myśleniu historycznym. Poznań: Epigram, 2009, 144 s.
XIII. The new cultural history and traditional source studies (Oleksii Tolochko)
XIV. Belles-lettres in history and history in belles-lettres (Andriy Zaiarniuk)
Barth, Roland, “The Discourse of History,” Comparative Criticism, 3 (1981):7-20.
Hayden White, “Introduction: Historical Fiction, Fictional History, and Historical Reality,”
Rethinking History, 9, 2-3, (2005):147-157.
Richard Slotkin, “Fiction for the Purposes of History,” Rethinking History, 9, 2-3, (2005):221236.
J. J. Long, “History, Narrative, and Photography in W. G. Sebald’s “Die Ausgewanderten,” The
Modern Language Review, 98, 1, (2203):117-137
XV. Urban cultural history and nationalism studies (Ostap Sereda)
This presentation is based on the experience of teaching a course "City and Nationalism in
Eastern and Central Europe, 1848-1939". This course aimed at critical exploring of the
development of public sphere, formation of urban culture and growth modern nationalism. Were
they mutually supportive or contradictory processes?
4
Peter Fritzsche, Reading Berlin. 1900 (Cambridge. Mass., 1996) [fragment]
Gabor Gyani, Identity and Its Urban Experience. Fin-de-siecle Budapest (New York, 2004), 2557;
M.Ryan, "The American Parade: Representations of the Nineteenth-Century Social Order", in
The New Cultural History, ed. by L.Hunt (Berkeley 1989), 131-153
A.V.Wendland, ‘Neighbors as Betrayers: Nationalization, Remembrance Policy, and the Urban
Public Sphere in Lviv’, Galicia. A Multicultured Land (Toronto 2005), 139-159
S.Desan, "Crowds, Community, and Ritual in the Work of E.P.Thompson and Natalie Davis", in
The New Cultural History, 47-71.
XVI. Architecture, politics and society (Andriy Zayarnyuk)
1) The Concept of Social Space;
2) Ceremony in Space;
3) Structures and Symbols;
4) Decisions and Agents;
5) Territoriality, city, and zoning
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991, 68-168.
Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. The Railway Journey: Trains and Travel in the Nineteenth Century.
New York: Urizen Books, 1979, 41-56.
Schlichting, Kurt C. Grand Central Terminal: Railroads, Architecture and Engineering in New
York. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, 115-154
5