Historical Studies: Disciplines and Discourses
An International Conference on the History and Theory of Historical Studies
Central European University
Pasts, Inc. Center for Historical Studies
Budapest
October 21-24, 2004
Fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is time to assess the state of the art in the history and theory of historiography: Eastern Europe has replaced Communist tyranny with democracy, and much of it has joined the European Union; the Cold War and its associated ideological, cognitive, epistemological, symbolic geographical, geopolitical, metaphysical grand narratives are subsiding; new histories are being made, experienced, and written. Half a generation after 1989, while busy distancing the twentieth century, we need to reconsider theories, methods, paradigms, topics, canons, vulgates, clichés, and maybe even some of the basics of our trade.
Less than one year before the 20th International Congress of Historical Sciences (Sydney, July 3-9, 2005), various particular and general visions of these basics ought to be examined in a global perspective. To do so, a major international conference is convened in Budapest, at Central European University (CEU: www.ceu.hu). The conference was initiated and is hosted by CEU’s Pasts, Inc. Center for Historical Studies (www.ceu.hu/pasts). Four related events will be integrated with the conference: (a) the first Jan Comenius Lectures on the Humanities, delivered by Hayden White from October 15th to October 19th; (b) the third meeting of the Regional Seminar on Recent History, devoted to the preparation of a collective volume on the historiography of Eastern Europe’s recent pasts (October 20); (c) a day of activities devoted to the discussion of “History Textbooks in the Public Sphere” (scholarly panel, opening of a textbook exhibition, public debate, concert) in the framework of the Day of French-German Friendship; (d) a workshop on “Representations of the Past: National Histories in Europe”, part of a larger research project funded by the European Science Foundation.
The conference, funded mainly by Pasts, Inc. Center for Historical Studies, is endorsed by the International Committee for Historical Sciences, and by the International Commission for the History and Theory of Historiography, with additional funding from the European Science Foundation, the Georg-Eckert-Institut für internationale Schulbuchforschung, and the Romanian Cultural Center in Budapest. On the basis of the proceedings, a series of collective volumes will be published in 2005 with CEU Press.
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