Historians and Social Values - Softcover

Rigney, Ann ; Leerssen, Joep

9789053564516: Historians and Social Values

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9053564519 ISBN 13: 9789053564516

Publisher: Amsterdam University Press, 2014

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Is historical scholarship compatible with commitment to social values? Do professional historians have particular social responsibilities and if so, how can they best exercise them? These are questions which are chronically open to debate in the light of changing historical circumstances and changing historical practices. In recent years, they have re-emerged as a result of a number of theoretical and cultural developments: the increasing realization that historians 'construct' history in selecting some topics for investigation rather than others; the calls among professionals and non-professionals alike to give priority to the preservation of private and collective 'memories' of the past; the increasing power of the mass media in disseminating views of the past and in thus competing with professional historians. In the light of these developments, the present collection surveys the relationship between historical writing and social values. It aims to stimulate and to inform discussion by clarifying, from a variety of points of view, the theoretical and the practical issues confronting contemporary historians.

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About the Author

Ann Rigney and Kiene Brillenburg Wurth are both professors of literary theory at the University of Utrecht.|"http://www.uva.nl/profiel/l/e/j.t.leerssen/j.t.leerssen.html">Joep Leerssen holds the Chair of Modern European Literature at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of many authoritative studies on the relations between literature, historical consciousness and nationalism.

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