Historiography

Description

Workshop organised by the ‘Religious Diversity and the Secular University‘ project.

Speakers: Joshua Bennett, Herman Paul, Adam Sutcliffe, Irene Zwiep, Philippa Levine, Perrine Simon-Nahum

We devote the third international workshop of the CRASSH-Mellon project, “Religious Diversity and the Secular University” to historiography. The nineteenth century continues to be called the century of history, and for good reason. At the disciplinary level, the practice of historical research and teaching is institutionalised in the modern research university, a story in which the figure of Leopold von Ranke still looms large. At the methodical level, the traditions of source-criticism and textual scholarship practiced by early modern humanists are carried over, reconceptualised and formalised in ways recent histories of ‘philology’ are exploring at length. More generally, the historiographical mind-set pervaded scholarly mentalities and rhetoric across the disciplines, as History replaced Providence as ultimate cause.
On a still widespread reading, historiography helped drive the disenchantment of the world. Against this narrative, however, this workshop will explore the persistence of religion and the religious across the historical disciplines and historical writing in the nineteenth-century. We shall look at historians, certainly, but also priests, theologians, artists, novelists, reformers, philosophers, a colourful cast of characters including August Neander, John Tolluch, Charles Kingsley, Moses Hess, Erastus Palmer and William Etty, Georg Waitz, Heinrich Graetz, and Karl Marx. Discussing six pre-circulated papers across two days, we shall explore such questions as: how did Catholic, Protestant and Jewish historians deal with the religious, with their own histories and those of others? How did historiography deal with the fact of religious diversity? How did history reconcile the secularization of scholarly method and scientific ideals with the persistent religious identities and loyalties of the historian?

If you would like to attend this workshop, please register with the project administrator.

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