This week, ending in August 03 2017:
Today's thread is for open discussion of:
History in the academy
Historiographical disputes, debates and rivalries
Implications of historical theory both abstractly and in application
Philosophy of history
And so on
Regular participants in the Thursday threads should just keep doing what they've been doing; newcomers should take notice that this thread is meant for open discussion only of matters like those above, not just anything you like -- we'll have a thread on Friday for that, as usual.
I like to joke about studying "white people history," but this is a dangerous deception in two major, major ways. First, medieval Europe was not "white" in either the modern sense OR in the sense of everyone having a pale-skin phenotype; second, people of all colors are medievalists--including of the stodgiest, most traditional, high medieval England/France political history variety.
Catalyzed by a racist incident at a major medieval conference recently, but recognizing that as only one occurrence of a much larger problem, the Medievalists of Color collective just released a statement on race and racism in medieval studies--both in our studies, and among those who study.
I'd especially encourage anyone thinking about going into medieval someday (undergrad, grad, for fun, anything) to read it. Medievalists must do better--and at this point, it's pretty clear that it's in the hands of the rising generations to do so.
I've had to rewrite this a couple times because I'm trying to find the right wording for it.
At a university in the UK, when I talk about historiography with my colleagues, I'm going to hear something similar to what I'd hear in North America or Australia, and what we've touched on here: we're pushing away from the methods of Victorian antiquarians in different ways, whether it's breaking up Great Man Theory, trying to decolonize our history, or moving onto Marxist materialism and social history, etc. And of course, there are smaller histories within our sub-fields. Medievalists will talk about exegesis and New Criticism, and other fields have different stories.
I've been thinking about how unique that experience must be to the Anglophone/European academy, and I wanted to put the question out to anyone here who has experience outside that academic "region": how different is your methodology? How do, for example's sake, Latin American or Middle Eastern historians approach their subjects?
I know that's like a crazy broad question, and reddit's demographics are what they are, but the more time I spend in the university the bigger the geographical barriers look and it just kind of boggles my mind.