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Writing the Past in the Present: An Anglo-Saxon Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Stefan Berger
Stefan Berger*
Affiliation:
University of Bochum, Germany
*
Stefan Berger, Director Institute for Social Movements, House for the History of the Ruhr, University of Bochum, Clemensstr. 17-19, 44789 Bochum, Germany Email: stefan.berger@rub.de
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Abstract

This article reviews some of the major developments in the field of historical studies from the late 1970s onwards. It argues that many of these developments take their cue from the emergence of the narrative or linguistic turn which can be dated back to the 1970s. Foucauldian ideas were also very influential in giving historical studies a new direction from the 1970s onwards. In particular the article looks at the development of gender history, the history from below and memory history. Subsequently it reviews the diverse impact the narrative and linguistic turn had on traditional areas of history writing, including political, social, economic and cultural history. In particular the rise of the new cultural history from the 1980s onwards was deeply connected to the linguistic turn and resulted in a visual turn and in the opening up of new areas for research, among which the turn to material culture was of particular importance over the last decade or so. The article concludes by discussing the increasing move towards forms of interdisciplinarity and intertextuality and the popularity of transnational history writing (including comparative history and the history of cultural transfers), among which world and global history have had the strongest appeal of late.

Type
Articles
Information
Diogenes , Volume 58 , Issue 1-2: The Humanities Today , May 2011 , pp. 5 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2012

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