Leeds

Philosophies of History at the University of Leeds in the School of English and the Leeds Humanities Research Institute


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AY 2015-2016 - Regular Program

Dear all,


Welcome back to another year of Philosophies of History! This is our fourth year on campus at the University of Leeds. In that time we’ve grown from a group of postgrads and junior faculty at Leeds, to an international project with extensive affiliations, across the Humanities, in academic, public and social institutions from Europe to the Middle East and Latin America. In June 2015 we held another international conference, and are pleased to announce that 2016 will see the publication of the first volume to derive from our series: Theories of History: History Read Across the Humanities, edited by Michael J. Kelly and Arthur Rose (London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2016). 

Our innovative, flexible and diverse funding structure allows us to engage those interested in philosophies of history around the world and we continue to expand, especially around South America. The core of our existence has been at Leeds, but, as our founders and principle directors have finished (or are about to finish) their PhDs at Leeds, we are now re-centering our project elsewhere. This means that we will have limited seminars at Leeds this year. We will update you all with news about our new home in the coming months. 

The format of the Philosophies of History evenings remains casual, but we do ask participants to prepare by reading the texts prior to the meeting. Please do not feel that, in order to attend, you must already be well-versed in the philosophy of history, or in any particular historical methods, philosophical enquiries, or theoretical debates. The group contains people from across the Humanities, from those who’ve struggled with these ideas for many years to some for whom this is all new. Philosophies of History is the product of the collective interests and expertise of its directors and those that have participated in our events. The result is that we are heavily Continental in our approach to theories and philosophies of history. However, we are open to Analytical and other paradigms for imagining and narrating the ‘before now’. In our first year, we brought the renowned analytic philosopher, Professor Frank Ankersmit, to Leeds to run one of our seminars. In 2015, we hosted another analytic thinker, Professor Rik Peters, from the Centre for Metahistory in Groningen.

In traditional Philosophies of History fashion, appropriate evening refreshments will be served. All readings are available in pdf.  We look forward to seeing you soon.  Warm Regards, The Directors.

If you have any questions, or suggestions for topics and readings, please feel free to contact us at: philosophiesofhistory@gmail.com, and visit our site at http://philosophiesofhistory.blogspot.co.uk

Location: School of English, University of Leeds.

Times & Basic Info: Select Thursdays, 5pm-7pm.


8 December - SPECIAL EVENT: 'Voiding History: Speculative Objectivity and the Anti-Historical Figure of Postnarrativity' - A lecture by Michael J. Kelly (University of York).

Michael J. Kelly, who is Associate Lecturer of Early Medieval History in the Department of History at the University of York, will speak about his forthcoming book: Speculative Objectivity: A Radical Philosophy of History (NY: Punctum Books, forthcoming 2016).



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AY 2014-2015 - Regular Program

Dear all,

Welcome back to another year of Philosophies of History! This is now our third year on campus. In that time we’ve grown from a group of postgrads and junior faculty at Leeds University, to an international project with extensive affiliations, across the Humanities, in academic, public and social institutions from Europe to the Middle East and Latin America. This past summer we held our first international conference and are soon to launch our edited volume series. We have also developed an innovative, flexible and diverse, funding structure that allows us to engage those interested in philosophies of history around the world. The core of our existence is still Leeds University, and we look forward to maintaining this cooperation. In the interest of doing so, we are, this year, formally one of the Leeds Humanities Research Institute’s Graduate Research Groups. We thank the LHRI for their generous funding, as well as the School of English for their third year of support.

The format of the Philosophies of History evenings is casual, but we do ask participants to prepare by reading the texts prior to the meeting. Please do not feel that, in order to attend, you must already be well-versed in the philosophy of history, or in any particular historical methods, philosophical enquiries, or theoretical debates. The group contains people from across the humanities, from those who’ve struggled with these ideas for many years to some for whom this is all new. Philosophies of History is the product of the collective interests and expertise of its directors and those that have participated in our events. The result is that we are heavily Continental in our approach to theories and philosophies of history. However, we are open to Analytical and other paradigms for imagining and narrating the ‘before now’. In our first year, we brought the renowned analytic philosopher, Professor Frank Ankersmit, to Leeds to run one of our seminars. This year, another analytic thinker, Professor Rik Peters, will come, from the Centre for Metahistory in Groningen, to lead a session.

In traditional Philosophies of History fashion, appropriate evening refreshments will be served. All readings are available in pdf.  We look forward to seeing you soon.  Warm Regards, The Directors.

If you have any questions, or suggestions for topics and readings, please feel free to contact us at: philosophiesofhistory@gmail.com, and visit our site at http://philosophiesofhistory.blogspot.co.uk


Location: Douglas Jefferson Room, School of English, University of Leeds.

Times & Basic Info: Select Thursdays, 5pm-7pm.


16 October – Factuality, Contingency and Truth: the Necessity of History
Discussion led by: Michael J. Kelly, Catalin Taranu and Richard Thomason (Leeds)

Readings:
1. Quentin Meillassoux, ‘The Principle of Factiality’, in Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, trans. by Ray Brassier (London: Continuum, 2008, repr. Bloomsbury, 2010), pp. 50-83.

2. Carlo Ginzburg, ‘The Bitter Truth: Stendhal’s Challenge to Historians’, in Ginzburg, Threads and Traces: True False Fictive, trans. by Anne C. Tedeschi and John Tedeschi (L.A., University of California Press, 2012), pp. 137-50.


13 November – Manuscripts, Culture, and the Mapping of the Past Across the Humanities

Discussion led by: Alaric Hall (University of Leeds)

Readings: 
1. John Dagenais, That Bothersome Residue: Toward aTheory of the Physical Text, in Vox Intexta: Orality and Textuality in the Middle Ages, eds. A.N. Doane and Carol Braun Pasternak (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), pp. 246-59

2. Bruce Holsinger, Parchment Ethics: A Statement of More than Modest Concern, New Medieval Literatures 12 (2010), 131-36

3. Matthew Driscoll, ‘The Words on the Page: Thoughts on Philology, Old and New’, in Creating the Medieval Saga: Versions, Variability, and Editorial Interpretations of Old Norse Saga Literature, ed. by Judy Quinn and Emily Lethbridge (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2010), pp. 85-102.


26 February – History, Discontinuity and Diffraction
Discussion led by: Catherine Karkov (University of Leeds)

Readings:
1. Birgit Mara Kaiser and Kathrin Thiele, Diffraction Onto-Epistemology, Quantum Physics and the Critical Humanities’, Parallax 20.3 (2014), 165-67

2.  Karen Barad, ‘DiffractingDiffraction: Cutting Together-Apart’, Parallax 20.3 (2014), 168-87.

3. ‘Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance: Dis/continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come’, Derrida Today 3.2 (2010), 240–268



5 March – SPECIAL EVENT: A Postnarrativist Philosophy of Historiography
A lecture by Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen (University of Oulu, Finland)

Time: Thursday, 5 March, 5 pm – 7 pm 
Location: Leeds Humanities Research Institute (Seminar Room 2) 

Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen, who is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Oulu in Finland, will talk about his new book, Postnarrativist Philosophy of Historiography.


21 May – SPECIAL EVENT: The Rhetoric of the Practical Past
Lecture and discussion led by: Rik Peters (University of Groningen)


Time: Thursday, 21 May, 1 pm – 3 pm 
Location: Leeds Humanities Research Institute Seminar Room 2

Contemporary  philosophy of history suffers from a pandemic fragmentation. Specialists of all kinds focus on a particular field  from  sublime historical experience, presence,  and hermeneutics to narrativity and epistemic virtues without reaching agreement however. Following recent developments in historiography, some philosophers of history now opt for making history more 'practical' but  they have not yet offered a philosophical basis for this position.  This paper seeks to develop that basis by relating historical experience to the practical past, arguing  that the defragmentation of philosophy of history should start with a rhetorical view of historiography.




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AY 2013-2014 - Regular Program

Dear all,

Welcome back to Philosophies of History for our second year of seminars, lectures and reading groups. In addition to our usual seminars in Leeds, this year we are running events also in Canterbury at the University of Kent, Tel Aviv at the Cohn Institute, Tel Aviv University, and at a public forum in Reykjavik. We are still coordinating the events in Jerusalem and Ramallah and hope to have final information on them soon, as well as the newest series of public engagements in Belfast.

Attached below is the program for the 2013-4 in Leeds, which will include links to the readings. The Leeds seminars will run throughout the teaching year from October 2013 to March 2014. As with last year, the meetings will be held in the Douglas Jefferson Room, School of English, University of Leeds and begin shortly after 5pm.  Of course, they will still also include a fine selection of refreshments, notably wine and various cheeses.

We warmly welcome all of those interested in 'the past'/past(s), how it is constructed, remembered, memorialized, politicized and otherwise theorized, invented, objectified, subjected and/or turned into 'History' - in short Philosophy of History and theories of History - to come along to the meetings. Please do not feel that you don't 'know enough'.  Philosophy of History is only now re-emerging as a serious, critical topic, and our group was the first new collection of scholars in the U.K. to form together to discuss the issues in over a decade.  In this we were quickly followed and since then have been lucky to partner with these developing networks and programs, as well as the previous generation of groups and scholars, to build a dynamic new international engagement with 'History'.  The point here is that the material, ideas and discourses are fresh to most of the people who come to the meetings, so please feel open to attend.  The discussions, although lively and serious, are also very relaxed - helped along by healthy wine and cheese breaks. 

For more information please email us at: philosophiesofhistory@gmail.com.


31 October – Why care about the Philosophy of History, and how is it related to ‘Theory’?

Introduced byCatalin Taranu, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds

          •  Reading: Eric J. Hobsbawm, On History (London: Weidenfeld, 1997): pp: 56-70 & 94-123 .

        • Suggested further reading: Mieke Bal, “Deliver Us from A-Historicism: Metahistory forNon-Historians” in R. Doran (ed.) Philosophy of History After Hayden White (London: Bloomsbury, 2013): pp. 67-88;  Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (NY: Routledge, 2002 [1954]).


28 November – ‘Historicizing History, Historicizing the Past’

Introduced byDr. Alaric Hall, School of English, University of Leeds

          • Reading: Zachary S. Schiffman, “Historicizing History/Contextualizing Context”, New Literary History, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Summer, 2011): 477-98Slavoj Žižek, ‘Cogito against Historicism’, in Living in the End Times (London: Verso, 2011): 279-91.


20 February – History, Media & the Meaning of the Past

Introduced byHervin Fernández-Aceves, School of History, University of Leeds

            • Reading: Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (Verso reprint, 2007 [2005]): ix-xi & 200-222; Alain Badiou, Rebirth of History (Verso, 2013): 1-6 & 96-105.


20 March – History as a Thought-Process

Introduced by:  Professor Catherine Karkov, Head of the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds

            • Reading: Herman Paul, “Performing History: How Historical Scholarship is Shaped by Epistemic Virtues”, History and Theory, vol. 50, no. 1 (February, 2011): 1-19; Mary Carruthers, TheBook of Memory: A Study in Medieval Culture  (Cambridge, 2008): 1-18.






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AY 2012-2013 - Regular Program, followed by details of talks by Prof. Frank Ankersmit, Dr. Adi Efal and Prof. Bruce Holsinger

4 October - Philosophy of History 1, or, What is History?

Introduced by Michael J. Kelly, University of Leeds
To be held in the Leeds Humanities Research Institute, Seminar Room 4, University of Leeds
25 October - Philosophy of History 2, or, History as Poetics?

Introduced by Arthur J. Rose, University of Leeds
To be held in the Douglas Jefferson Room, School of English, University of Leeds
8 November - How Historians Think: The Legacy of 19th century Historiography  

Introduced by Professor Ian N. Wood, University of Leeds (session to begin at 3pm)*

To be held in the Douglas Jefferson Room, School of English, University of Leeds

11 December - History & 'Theory': The Empirical and Metaphysical

Introduced by Professor Bruce Holsinger, University of Virginia
To be held in the Douglas Jefferson Room, School of English, University of Leeds

7 February - Dialectics: The Dialectic and its Role in Historical Methodologies

Introduced by Assistant Professor Robert Drury King, Sierra Nevada College & Free University of Brussels
To be held in the Douglas Jefferson Room, School of English, University of Leeds

7 March - Speculative Realism...an end to Postmodernism in History?

Introduced by Dr. Adi Efal, Gerda Henkel Research Fellow, Universität zu Köln
To be held in the Douglas Jefferson Room, School of English, University of Leeds

18 April - Interdisciplinarity: A Helpful Discourse?

Introduced by Professor Miriam Leonard, UCL
To be held in the Douglas Jefferson Room, School of English, University of Leeds

2 May - Logic(s) - Ontology - History: Questions of Historical Representation

Introduced by Professor Frank Ankersmit, University of Groningen
To be held in the Douglas Jefferson Room, School of English, University of Leeds
  • Reading: Frank Ankersmit, "Representationist Logic", 2013. 


Further Details:

2 May 2013

"Logic(s) – Ontology – History: Questions of Historical Representation"

Introduced by: Professor Frank Ankersmit, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Frank Ankersmit, senior professor of Intellectual History and Historical Theory, and world-renown expert and innovator in the field will lead our final meeting of the 2012-3 Philosophies of History.

Professor Ankersmit’s extensive contributions to the studies of the philosophy and theory of history, to historical method and to historiography have been integral to shaping the entire direction of these fields.  His works include Narrative Logic: A Semantic Analysis of the Historian’s Language (Springer, 1983), History and Tropology: The Rise and Fall of Metaphor (Oxford, 1994), Historical Representation (Stanford, 2001), and Sublime Historical Experience (Stanford, 2005).  Prof. Ankersmit is in close dialogue with the works of Hayden White, Roland Barthes and the linguistic turn in History, though most recently, what we will read for our seminar, he is in the midst of the important new discourse that reconciles Continental and Analytical thinking.  He is also part of the newly emerged International Network for the Theory of History, which will hold its inaugural conference in July, 2013.

The topic and readings for our seminar will be focused on questions of historical representation.  In particular we’ll seek to understand to what extent and in what ways are logic or logics, truths, images, mathematics, and ontology significant to the way in which we think History.   In order to get to this point we may consider asking first and foremost what do we mean by logic?  Is it singular, multiplicitous, existent or ‘inexistent’, etc.  Furthermore then what is the relation of logic to (historical) truth(s), to (historical) object(s), to (historical) worlds? What too, thinking about our seminar with Dr. Adi Efal on the work of Quentin Meillassoux, is logic to (co-)relationism, to post-Aristotelian thought, to historical objectivity and subjectivity?  Where we ultimately end up going with the discussion is of course far from written on the wall, but these are the initial thoughts with which we might want to grapple, all to end of grasping historical logic and representation.

For the evening we will be reading and interrogating a piece by Prof. Ankersmit titled “Represenationalist Logic” (available on our blog), as well as a handout to follow.  We may also be reading another article or chapter on logic, an update on which will follow shortly.

There will as always be a fine selection of cheeses, wines and other refreshments.  We look forward to seeing you all in Leeds.


7 March 2013

"Speculative Realism...and end to Postmodernism in History?

Introduced by Dr. Adi Efal, Universität zu Köln

Dr. Adi Efal, an expert on the interactions between philosophical inquiry and the historical subject, will lead this meeting of our monthly seminar series of Philosophies of History.

The topic of the evening is the potential impact on the writing and thinking of History of the rapidly emerging neo-Platonic movement called 'Speculative Realism', which attempts to re-evaluate the concept of correlationism, that subjects and objects have meaning in relation to one another. For speculative realists this is true, however, as Badiou states, there are 'bodies and languages', but there are also, 'truths', there is inherent meaning in the world that is not dependent on relation. For Quentin Meillassoux, the student of Badiou, such objects hold inherently 'mathematical' (ontologically mathematic) truths. 

This turn back towards realism, via a universalist ontology, is already evident in a host of new historical research and texts produced by historians. It not only strokes trends in scientificity but seems to be bringing forth from hiding the sublimated modernism of even the youngest generation of historians. Thus we will explore the thought behind Speculative Realism, its current and potential impact on History, and generally interrogate this line of thinking for historians. 

We are reading texts by Quentin Meillassoux and Ian Bogost for the seminar, which we would kindly ask you to have read beforehand. They are available on our home page.
There will of course be a selection of fine cheeses, wines, ales and other refreshments. We looking forward to seeing you all in Leeds. 

For more information please see our ad at:
http://events.history.ac.uk/event/show/9220




10 December 2013

Council Chamber, Parkinson Bldg, Univ. of Leeds  

Open Lecture by Professor Bruce Holsinger (University of Virginia): 

                 'The Written Ram and the Double Helix: The Many Lives of Parchment'

Introduced by Professor Catherine KarkovSchool of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, Leeds

Prof. Holsinger will be coming to Leeds to lead a discussion on History & 'Theory' at the Philosophies of History seminar on the 11th of December.  The evening before this seminar Professor Holsinger will be delivering an Open Lecture at 5:30pm in the Council Chamber next to room 1.08, Parkinson Building, University of Leeds.  All are welcome and encouraged to attend and participant in the dialogue and discourses.  There will be a selection of wines, ales, cheeses and crackers after the lecture and as always during the seminar.  

Paper Abstract:
This paper will examine the parchment inheritance of the Western tradition from a number of angles: as a record of environmental history, as a repository of zooarchaeological knowledge, as an enduring provocation to theological reflection.

Bio of Prof. Holsinger:

Bruce Holsinger teaches medieval literature and cultural theory in the Department of English at the University of Virginia, where he currently directs the Program in Medieval Studies. His first book 'Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer' (Stanford University Press, 2001), won major awards from the Medieval Academy of America, the Modern Language Association, and the American Musicological Society. Subsequent books have included 'The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory' (University of Chicago Press, 2005), 'Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror' (Prickly Paradigm/University of Chicago Press, 2007), and, with Rachel Fulton, the edited collection 'Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person' (Columbia University Press, 2007). Much of his research in recent years has been devoted to a long-term project, "The Work of God: Liturgical Culture and Vernacular Writing in Britain, 550-1550" (to appear from the University of Chicago Press), which examines the shaping role of liturgical culture in the history of literary writing, from the earliest known vernacular survivals in the sixth century to the coming of common prayer in the sixteenth. He is also the author of a historical novel, "A Burnable Book," set in London in 1385 and featuring John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer. The book will be published by HarperCollins in the UK and William Morrow in the US early in 2014. His research has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

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