Historical Writing

This pilot was conducted at two PHABO secondary schools in Los Angeles. Both schools had API scores in the lowest decile of public schools in the state of California. A series of Document Based Question Assessments (DBQ’s) were administered to a sample of students from each school (N=315). The resulting performance data, additional factors, and implications for Common Core writing instruction in Social Studies suggest that educators will be successful in implementing common core writing tasks if they are supported by instructional leaders who explicitly teach writing scaffolds across the curriculum, endorse the use of peer review grading policies and incorporate revision memos into the writing process, and allow teachers to collaboratively develop, design, and assess document based question assessments into all social studies subjects.

На правах рукописи. Диссертация на соискание учёной степени доктора исторических наук.
Текст генетически связан с текстом монографии "Образ древности в советской историографии" (М., 2013), но имеет, помимо стилистических, ряд содержательных отличий. Наибольшей переработке подверглись введение (особенно методологический раздел), а также последние главы: в монографии их пять, в диссертации - четыре. В то же время сделаны незначительные количественно, но важные по смыслу дополнения в 1-ой главе и более заметные дополнения во 2-ой главе, в частности, расширен круг анализируемых произведений В.В. Струве, позволяющих лучше проследить генезис его концепции. С другой стороны, в монографии есть разделы, которые не вошли в предлагаемый текст: например, подробный обзор и критика историографической концепции А.В. Юдина.

Since 19th century numerous scholars discuss whether history is science or art and raise doubts on its cognitive capacities. From that time the gap between “scientific” and “narrative” notion of history became even larger. Positivism, historism, Marxism, structuralism, social history, demography and quantitative history, cliometrics and other historical schools tried to establish the “scientific” historiography. Their contribution to the historical knowledge and methodology is undeniable, but, nevertheless, their attempts to establish exactness in history failed. In effort to achieve this goal they rejected narration, because it was considered to be unscientific. The result of this modernistic definition of history, together with the new literary criticism was that history is often regarded as a kind of hybrid lacking the qualities of science as well as the art. But, this kind of discussion and its conclusion is possible only within the modernistic paradigm, which came to its end. By raising the questions on narrative discourse, post-modernism opened new ways of thinking on the relations between science and art, history and philosophy defining them as different but equally worth “paths to knowledge”. Instead of modernistic meta-histories, post-modernism offered pluralism, differences, subjectivity, temporality and relativity of cognition. Regardless of all post-modernistic aporias they still enable history to redefine itself, outside of the modernistic project of “scientific history”. Epistemological fragility of history results from the absence of its object, the undefined methodology, the lack of theory, subjectivity of historical knowledge and from the influence of different ideologies. The historians have to accept these limitations or, rather, characteristics of historical knowledge and, starting from there, redefine its cognitive capacities and methodology.
In the middle of the discussion on history last 20 –30 years is the question whether it can mediate the past reality through the text. Radical post-modern theory denies such a possibility based on conviction that there are no references outside the texts. Instead of traditional modernistic exclusivism that rejected narration and rhetorical means in history, now we have another exclusivism that disclaims any significance of historical research. Narration is more than just shaping the results of historical research, but it is not the only constituent of the historiography. History as a discipline deals with the past reality, i.e. something which is outside the text. It means that historiography has referential quality. Post-modernistic discussion fell into controversies in this matter, so many theorists withdrew from the previous radical positions and acknowledged that historiography can mediate the past reality in spite of its literariness.
In spite of all inconsistencies and contradictions of post-modernistic objections on history, it’s clear that we can’t go back to traditional methodology that neglected the textuality of its products. Historiography has to accept epistemological significance of its literary form, but at the same time it mustn’t avoid the theory. History can’t be reduced to mere narration nor to traditional critical methods of the research – it has to integrate both, together with the theoretical, critical dimension. It has to take into account the subjectivity of historical cognition, i. e. to admit that historical knowledge changes in time and differ according to different perspectives or interpretation.

The authors catalogue all the chronological indications of three mauscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A, D, and E, and analyze them as the central element of the inner organization of the annalistic text. The authors study such wordings as the annal-numbers, the words which follow the annal-numbers (such as 'Her' etc.), the formula with which new items start inside an annal (such as 'On thys ilcan geare'), precise dates (Kalends, church festivals, etc.), wordings which are used to organize long narrations (like 'Tha sona aefter thaem'), references outside the particular annal (indications of the duration of reigns, references to earlier and later events, etc.).

Focusing on the early Chinese historiography, this article took the Duoshiwei（鐸氏微）, which is believed an abridgment of ‘Chunqiu’ and made by Chu education official Duojiao（鐸椒）, as a starting point. Although the book has no longer existed; in the recent discussion of the nature of the Qinghua Bamboo Slip Xinian（繫年） and the other distinct historical manuscripts, researchers tended to link these excavated texts to Duoshiwe. Therefore, in the second part, this article examined the depiction of early Chinese scholars quoting and excerpting the ‘ChunQiu’ in Shiji (史記), and argued that the historical context of early Chinese manuscript culture required closer examination and more evidence before drawing a parallel between excavated texts and a non-existent book.
With two case studies in the third and fourth parts, this article compared anecdotes in the transmitted texts such as Zuozhuan, Guoyu, and excavated texts Xi-nian, Yuegongqishi（越公其事）. In case study 1, the parallel text of the ‘Xigui story’ in Xinian and Zuozhuan, the different rhetoric and discrepancies in interpretation indicated that it was impracticable to build a sequence or a one-way passing relationship of these two texts. Moreover, in case study 2, through the comparison of similar discourse in Guoyu and Yue-gong Qi-shi, this article described the ‘appropriation of phrases’, which revealed the circulation of ‘Wu-Yue story’ and its various adoption in different texts.

This article examines how Catholic moral theologians analyzed the constraints imposed by the rights of the dead to their good name on historical writing and research.  The concern of Catholic moral theologians for persons’ rights to their good name coupled with their concern for the rights of dead persons placed serious moral constrains on the work of historians. At the same time, from very early on, these moral theologians showed appreciation of the benefits of historical writing, including writing on the less public aspects of historical figures. The general tendency was to allow to historians some greater moral elbow room. There was, however, a clear red line: what was and had been always secret could not be revealed, regardless of the benefits.

By the end of the nineteenth century the authors of the casuist manualists revised the traditional doctrine and removed the moral red line that was accepted up to then. Historians could now reveal what had always been secret. This doctrinal development resulted from two historical events. On the one hand the opening of the Vatican Archives and the need to give to propagandists and journalists within politically organized Catholic conservatism to fight as equals in the printed media.

This paper poses the question of what possible desires expressed in Metahistory remain ungratified for Hayden White. In engaging the relationship between White’s later writings on figural realism, middle-voice writing and the practical past, I claim that these more recent topics are concerned with thinking ways for a community to retrospectively appropriate a past for its own project of self-making. Moreover, they also deal with the unavoidably figurative nature of any attempt at historical interpretation as narrativization. In other words, the three topics discuss the poetics of history, the constitution of a link between past, present and future, as a critical shifting between discourse and agency.
Within this context, I want to suggest that these later issues are elaborations of something that was already present in Metahistory forty years ago: a desire for a progressive historiography, a writing of history that ironically accepts both the free and conditioned nature of our cultural discursive means for giving ourselves a past that still romantically seeks to transcend its own irony and to imagine a future to call our own. In pursuing this aim, I will claim that a performative theory of (historical) identity inspired by Judith Butler’s work may well be where White’s desire can best be heard.

This paper addresses the fundamental question of the relationship between political philosophy and history; it does so through a study of the interpretations of Thucydides’ War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians developed by two contemporary philosophers and political theorists, Leo Strauss and Raymond Aron. In continuing the dialogue between Strauss and Aron, I will set forth a critical analysis of the arguments put forward by the two authors in their attempt to clarify the tension between universal political standards and the singularity of historical experience. The thesis I aim to defend is that their readings represent two opposite lines of inquiry: whereas Strauss seeks to unveil the limits of political history by stating the primacy of political philosophy, Aron insists on the essential features of politics brought to light by Thucydides, namely the contingent dimension of all political action and the centrality of the of phronesis in political judgment.

This thesis argues that previous research on the Journal of Kambujasuriya, Cambodia’s first Khmer-language journal that was first published in 1926 A.D., mainly focuses on the writings on Literature and Buddhism, whereas the historical writings in this journal have not been seriously studied.
The publication and distribution of historical knowledge in the Journal of Kambujasuriya from 1926 to 1953, such as historical writings about the origin of Angkor Wat, the chronicle of Cambodia, the researches on the history of Cambodian culture, and the translations of history and world civilization, were an important effort by French and hierarchy Cambodian Intellectuals to establishing of Cambodia’s historical knowledge, including to associated the story of Cambodian history with the world civilization, which had an influence on the understanding of the Cambodian past, the appreciation of the Cambodian cultural value, and conduces to nationalism of Cambodia

The study explores two aspects: the first is related to the written historical works in Aleppo and it vicinity during the first seven centuries of Islamic era until the period in which the historian Kamal Al-Din Ibn Al-Adim, the writer of Bughyat al-Talab fi Tarikh Halab, lived (660 AH/1262 A.D). The written book is one of the most outstanding works due to the valuable ancient texts that sheds the light on the history of this part of levant. The study found that there were many efforts made on the history of the region before Ibn Al-Adim like Syiar Al-Thughoor, by Al Tarsousi (401AH/1010), Yahya ibn Ali ibn Zurayq’s book (509AH/1115 A.D), Hamdan Atharebi’s book (542 AH/ 1147 A.D), and AlUdaimi’s two books (556 AH/1161 A.D). Ibn Al-Adim relied on all of those important resources in writing his works. The second thing covered in the study is the analysis of the book itself “Bughyat al-Talab fi Tarikh Halab” and its importance in studying the history of region. The study explores the great efforts made by Ibn Al-Adim in documenting everything related to the region.
تبحث هذه الورقة في موضوعين متلازمين، الأول: يتتبع حركة التأليف التاريخي في حلب وجوارها طيلة القرون السبعة الهجرية الأولى وصولاً إلى زمن كمال الدين ابن العديم (ت 660هـ/ 1262م)، الذي ألَّف كتاباً في تاريخ حلب بعنوان "بغية الطلب في تاريخ حلب"، ونال من الحظوة والثناء الشيء الكثير، لفرادة ما تضمنه من نصوص تاريخية لأعمال متقدمة ضاعت أصولها، فحفظ لنا بعضها، وعرَّف بها وبمؤلفيها، بما ساهم وأعان في دراسة تاريخ التأريخ لهذه المنطقة الواسعة من بلاد الشام.
والموضوع الثاني: التعريف بالمؤرخ الحلبي كمال الدين ابن العديم وكتابه الكبير في التاريخ الذي وصلنا ثلثه، والإلماع لأهميته في دراسة تأريخ التاريخ، وبيان منهجه في التأليف وطريقته في العرض والسرد التاريخي، والإشارة إلى جوانب الفضل والتميز فيه.

ВНИМАНИЕ: В названии статьи в файле опечатка - правильно: конец X - начало XII в.

Annals in Easter-tables are a ‘primitive’ though important genre of medieval historical writing. The article contains a systematic overview of such annals written in late Anglo-Saxon and early Norman England which survived in seven manuscripts (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 579, f. 53r; London, British Library, Cotton Titus D. xxvii, f. 14v–21r; London, British Library, Cotton Caligula, A. xv, f. 132v–139r; Roma, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. lat. 12, f. 16v and 17v; London, British Library, Cotton Nero C. v, f. 19v–26r; Cambridge, University Library, Kk 5.32, f. 61r–75v; Oxford, St John’s College 17, f. 29r–29v and 139r–155v). The author consulted manuscripts in London and Cambridge de visu and is familiar with those in Oxford and Rome via facsimiles. The author studies the layout of the tables, the appearance, origin and process of creation of the annals as well as their content.
Most of the annals are placed in the right or left margins of paschal tables designed for particular sets of years (more or less long). In two manuscripts of Marianus Scotus’ Chronicle annals accompany a universal table for 532 years, they comprise a sort of world chronicle with short English additions. The quantity of annalistic notes in one table varies from three to several hundreds. Most of the annals are in Latin but the notes in London, British Library, Cotton Caligula, A. xv are in Old English until 1109. Sometimes annals were created retrospectively in one sitting, but sometimes were updated from time to time. Annalistic notes are dedicated to various topics among which changes of secular and ecclesiastical rulers predominate. The two earliest sets of annals (and the only pre-1066 ones) contain nothing but obits. Later annals describe other kinds of events as well, and their notes are sometimes more extended than two or three words.
Annals in Easter-tables are interesting from several points of view: as reflection of historical memory of particular religious houses, as examples of medieval historiographical work (sometimes undertaken by several generations of monks), as an independent source of information on historical events, as a valuable palaeographical material.

More than 1,800 teachers enrolled in the National Council for the Social Studies; first MOOC: Improving Historical Reading and Writing. There were an average of 13,000 weekly page views of course content and approximately 600 participations, or actions taken, in the course each week. Discussion board analysis revealed that half of educators graded their C3 Framework  professional development with an F, yet 89% remain enthusiastic about shifting to C3-focused instruction. Educational leaders have an opportunity to provide high-quality professional development opportunities that combine Social Studies and ELA instruction in a collegial and collaborative environment that unites the disciplines in meaningful student-driven inquiry.

My first book deals with the historical writing of Ferenc Eckhart. Here one can download the cover and the contents of the volume.

An influential historian of constitutional and economic history, Ferenc Eckhart contributed greatly to the Hungarian historical writing in the first half of the twentieth century. He paved the way for a much more historical and analytical view of constitutional history while fiercely debating narrow-minded, nationalist interpretations of Hungarian constitutional history. This book gives a detailed overview about this ouvre and highlights the key elements in his historical writing.

The book has been published by the Ráció Publisher, Budapest, 2020.

http://www.racio.hu/toro-laszlo-david-a-szellemtortenet-is-csak-az-adatokbol-indulhat-ki-eckhart-ferenc-torteneszi-munkassaganak-fobb-problemai?PHPSESSID=adac7f81457f8b23066b9a889c9d9b3c

Dieses Buch beleuchtet die räumlichen Kontexte, innerhalb derer Geschichte (zugänglich) gemacht wird, und thematisiert die Unsichtbarkeit derjenigen, die sie erarbeiten. Gezeigt werden die Schreibtische von 74 Historiker_innen aus ganz Europa, die am Institut für Geschichte der Universität Graz tätig sind. Dazu illustrieren selbst gewählte Sätze jene Geschichten, die an diesen Orten geschrieben werden. Gefragt wird so nach einer der Bedingungen, aber auch nach den Konsequenzen wissenschaftlichen, besonders historischen Arbeitens.

Ein durch das gesamte Buch laufender Essay über jene Aspekte, die die Positionierung des Subjekts zu Geschichte und Raum bestimmen oder stören, stellt einen roten Faden dar. Abgebildet werden Arbeitsräume, in denen zu allen Epochen und allen Gegenden der Erde historische Forschung und Lehre betrieben wird, genauso aber auch Büros der Administration des Grazer Geschichteinstituts. Ein genauer Blick darauf zahlt sich aus, schließlich kreuzen sich am Schreibtisch der Historiker_innen die Achsen von Raum und Zeit. Er ist der Ort, wo unser Bild der Vergangenheit für eine zukünftige Rezeption gegenwärtig gemacht wird.

I prepare high-quality illustrations of art objects or historical buildings for museums and academics to use in publications and related work. You can appreciate a small selection of my works at: https://sites.google.com/site/matildegrimaldi/
Please do take the time to look at my works, and do not hesitate to contact me for any enquiry!
matilde.grimaldi@gmail.com

At both popular and academic levels, Malcolm has been the object of considerable myth-making: as nemesis of the ‘usurper’ Macbeth, as husband of St Margaret, often as ‘last Celtic king’, father of Scottish feudalism, and Anglophile culture warrior. In his own day, Malcolm had a reputation as an ambitious risk-taker and a fearsome slave-gathering warlord, as well as being a prominent patron of literary culture. Malcolm’s long and eventually very detailed afterlife encompasses much that will interest historians of later times, but the eleventh century was an important era in its own right and there are other, more credible reasons to regard his reign as among the most significant in Scottish history.

This is the spanish translation of the Introduction to my anthology 'The Engaged Historian. Perspectives on the Intersection of Politics, Activism and the Historical Profession' (pp. 1-31). The english version has also been uploaded to 'academia.edu'. Many thanks to César Augusto Duque-Sánchez, Juan Sebastián Macías Díaz and Irma Poveda for sending me the translation.

Book review of two volumes of Writing the Nation Series:
Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz (eds.): Nationalizing the Past. Historians as Nation Builders in Modern Europe.
R.J.W. Evans and Guy P. Marchal (eds.): The Uses of the Middle Ages in Modern European States. History, Nationhood and the Search for Origins.

Since 19th century numerous scholars discuss whether history is science or art and raise doubts on its cognitive capacities. From that time the gap between “scientific” and “narrative” notion of history became even larger. Positivism, historism, Marxism, structuralism, social history, demography and quantitative history, cliometry and other historical schools tried to establish the “scientific” historiography. Their contribution to the historical knowledge and methodology is undeniable, but, nevertheless, their attempts to establish exactness in history failed. In effort to achieve this goal they rejected narration, because it was considered to be unscientific. The result of this modernistic definition of history, together with the new literary criticism was that history is often regarded as a kind of hybrid lacking the qualities of science as well as the art. But, this kind of discussion and its conclusion is possible only within the modernistic paradigm, which came to its end. By raising the questions on narrative discourse, post-modernism opened new ways of thinking on the relations between science and art, history and philosophy defining them as different but equally worth “paths to knowledge”. Instead of modernistic meta-histories, post-modernism offered pluralism, differences, subjectivity, temporality and relativity of cognition. Regardless of all post-modernistic aporias they still enable history to redefine itself, outside of the modernistic project of “scientific history”. Epistemological fragility of history results from the absence of its object, the undefined methodology, the lack of theory, subjectivity of historical knowledge and from the influence of different ideologies. The historians have to accept these limitations or, rather, characteristics of historical knowledge and, starting from there, redefine its cognitive capacities and methodology.
In the middle of the discussion on history last 20 –30 years is the question whether it can mediate the past reality through the text. Radical post-modern theory denies such a possibility based on conviction that there are no references outside the texts. Instead of traditional modernistic exclusivism that rejected narration and rhetorical means in history, now we have another exclusivism that disclaims any significance of historical research. Narration is more than just shaping the results of historical research, but it is not the only constituent of the historiography. History as a discipline deals with the past reality, i.e. something which is outside the text. It means that historiography has referential quality. Post-modernistic discussion fell into controversies in this matter, so many theorists withdrew from the previous radical positions and acknowledged that historiography can mediate the past reality in spite of its literarity.
In spite of all inconsistencies and contradictions of post-modernistic objections on history, it’s clear that we can’t go back to traditional methodology that neglected the textuality of its products. Historiography has to accept epistemological significance of its literary form, but at the same time it mustn’t avoid the theory. History can’t be reduced to mere narration nor to traditional critical methods of the research – it has to integrate both, together with the theoretical, critical dimension. It has to take into account the subjectivity of historical cognition, i. e. to admit that historical knowledge changes in time and differ according to different perspectives or interpretation.

An unavoidable task in historical writing is beginning and ending within particular time periods, dates, or moments. But while a published article denotes its end—the publication date—historical writing often does not admit of a beginning. The genesis of an article, like the history that it tells, is multifaceted, yet can reveal the complex relationship between history and historian.

В статье прослеживается изменение соотношения письменных и устных источников в историческом нарративе на примере многочисленных работ И.М. Снегирева об Измайлове, вышедших с 1820-х до 1860-х гг. Доминирование письменных источников  к 1860-м гг. свидетельствует о том, что устная коммуникация стала меньше влиять на историописание, утратив статус "первичного" исторического источника.
The paper tracks changes in balance of written and oral sources in historical narrative by example of many works about Izmaylovo, edited by I.M. Snegirev in 1820-1860s. Domination of written sources by 1860s indicates, that oral communication has less influenced historical writing and has lost the status of “primary” historical sources.

This is a detailed review of a collection of articles “Historical
Narratives and Christian Identity on a European Periphery: Early History Writing in Northern, East-Central, and Eastern Europe (c. 1070–1200)” edited by Ildar H. Garipzanov and published in 2011. The purpose of this volume was to present a complete overview of the main early historical narratives written on the northern and eastern periphery of Europe from about 1070
to 1200, and to focus chiefl y on their role in the construction of Christian identity in the fi rst century after the adoption of Christianity. Unfortunately, the selected topic as well as the source material have not made it possible to draw a uniform picture of the process. And the reason for this is not only
the diversity of modern national historiographies, which is rightly pointed to in the introduction written by the editor, but also some shortcomings of the original intention. Doubtful, in particular, seems an a priori belief that every early historical text should show up a tendency for the formation of Christian identity and/or an explication of the author’s attitude towards the pre-Christian (= pagan) past. With that, we have to agree with the editor that such polyphony helps us to better understand both medieval literary culture and modern medieval studies. In the opinion of the reviewer, early medieval
historiography should be subdivided not along the linguistic lines: Latin op. national language (as is done in the book), but on the historical and geographical basis: Danish and Swedish historiographies (somewhy not even mentioned in the book), Icelandic and Norwegian, close in their origin (since Iceland had
been settled primarily from Norway) but differing in genres that had emerged under the consequence of profound differences in the social structure of the two states (the Kingdom of Norway, with its holy kings and the democracy in Iceland with its saint bishops). Strategies of expressing (formulating) Christian identity in Old Norse narratives, as the book demonstrates, are really diverse. Despite some shortcomings, the book under review is a solid, valuable and commendable work of a large group of leading specialists and experts in the
fi eld of those early medieval sources that are discussed here.