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History and Theory
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Wesleyan University
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Current Issue

ON FUTURES AND ENDINGS: NARRATOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON CONTEMPORARY FORMS OF CRISES

Anne Fuchs

The article examines the changing relationship of the present to the future from a narratological perspective. It argues that three dominant narrative schemas structure the contemporary experiences of temporality in the Western social imaginary: the modern crisis narrative, the apocalyptic narrative, and the chronic crisis narrative. . . . Read more

SAME/DIFFERENCE? TOWARD A SAPPHIC/NONBINARY SEXUALITY OF HISTORY

Susan S. Lanser

What is the next step when one has published a strong intervention in a field but later recognizes that one's angle of vision deserves new scrutiny? In this article, which began as a roundtable talk, I return to The Sexuality of History: Modernity and the Sapphic, 1565–1830 (2014) to interrogate its “same-sex” logic through a nonbinary/trans lens. . . . Read more

GREEN BOUGHS ON THE GRAVES: UNMOORING HERAT FROM IMPERIAL TIME

Tanvir Ahmed

The aim of this article is to explore how popular historical knowledge disrupts the spacetimes produced by imperial power. To this end, I present my reading of a shrine guide that was composed by Asil al-Din Waʿiz in 1460 and that documents the city of Herat's blessed dead. . . . Read more

MORE THAN MEETS THE FACT: THE UNIVERSALITY OF HISTORY AND THE COLONIAL MEDIATION

Eugenia Gay

This article examines how mediation is not just limited to the format that's selected to convey the findings of previously conducted research that supposedly followed the conventional protocols of the historical discipline. . . . Read more

THE COUNTED TIME: TECHNICAL TEMPORALITIES AND THEIR CHALLENGES TO HISTORY

Pedro Telles da Silveira

One of the main debates regarding historical representation within digital media concerns narrative, particularly the difficulty in articulating it. Digital technologies are usually presented as opposed to linear, written narratives, which is of consequence to historical writing. . . . Read more

RESTORING CONTINUITY: NOTES ON HISTORY AND FICTION

Juan Gabriel Vásquez

In 1935, as Europe witnessed the rise of fascism, Paul Valéry tried to identify the origins of the crisis in a lecture titled “Le bilan de l'intelligence.” Things were better, he claimed, when people were able to understand their present moment as the result of past events—that is, when “continuity reigned in the minds.” In this article, I discuss why that sense of continuity with the past is, in fact, indispensable for individuals and societies alike. . . . Read more

HISTORY AND POLITICS AS IF WE STILL LIVED IN THE HOLOCENE

Brad S. Gregory

Review article on David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021).

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021), by David Graeber and David Wengrow, is a monumental, boldly revisionist study of the human past from the last ice age to the present. . . . Read more

DEFENDING SPIRIT, SPIRITUALIZING MATTER: NINETEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHY AND THE MEDICAL SCIENCES

Giuseppe Bianco

Review essay on Larry Sommer McGrath's Making Spirit Matter: Neurology, Psychology, and Selfhood in Modern France (2020).

This review essay discusses Larry Sommer McGrath's Making Spirit Matter: Neurology, Psychology, and Selfhood in Modern France (2020), a history of the philosophical current known as “spiritualism” . . . Read more

VALIDITY NOW

Suzanne Marchand

Review essay on Martin Jay's Genesis and Validity: The Theory and Practice of Intellectual History (2021).

This review essay offers an extended analysis of Martin Jay's Genesis and Validity: The Theory and Practice of Intellectual History, highlighting Jay's emphasis on the need for intellectual historians to address the question of the present-day validity of ideas. . . . Read more

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