History after Hobsbawm: Writing the Past for the Twenty-First Century
John H. Arnold, Matthew Hilton, and Jan Rüger
Abstract
What does it mean—and what might it yet come to mean—to write ‘history’ in the twenty-first century? This volume brings together leading historians from across the globe to ask what being an historian should mean in their particular fields of study. Taking their cue from one of the previous century’s greatest historians, Eric Hobsbawm, and his interests across many periods and places, the essays approach their subjects with an underlying sense of what the best role an historian might seek to play, and attempt to help twenty-first century society to understand ‘how we got here’. They present ne ... More
What does it mean—and what might it yet come to mean—to write ‘history’ in the twenty-first century? This volume brings together leading historians from across the globe to ask what being an historian should mean in their particular fields of study. Taking their cue from one of the previous century’s greatest historians, Eric Hobsbawm, and his interests across many periods and places, the essays approach their subjects with an underlying sense of what the best role an historian might seek to play, and attempt to help twenty-first century society to understand ‘how we got here’. They present new work in their subfields, but also pointers to how their specialisms are developing, how they might further grow in the future, and how different areas of focus might speak to the larger challenges of history—both for the discipline itself and for its relationship to other fields of academic inquiry. Like Hobsbawn, the authors in this collection know that history matters. They speak to both the past and the present and, in so doing, present some of the most exciting new lines of research in a broad array of subjects, from the medieval period to the present.
Keywords:
future, history,
historian,
Eric,
Hobsbawm,
specialism
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198768784 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2017 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198768784.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
John H. Arnold, editor
Professor of Medieval History, University of Cambridge
Matthew Hilton, editor
Professor of Social History, Queen Mary University of London
Jan Rüger, editor
Professor of History, Birkbeck, University of London
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