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Students at the New School Institute for Retired Professionals
(IRP) in New York have always had a strong interest in studying history.
This semester they are also looking at how history is written and reported
in the study group on Historiography.
Historiography is the history of writing history. From Biblical times,
through early Christianity, the Enlightenment, to Postmodernism, historians'
points of view and motivation have shifted. Historiography addresses
the issues and questions around disparate points of view,
such as: should historians stick to the facts or use their judgment;
is history cyclical or linear; is history a science; does the "great
man" or do historical forces drive history?
The group reads historians from Herodotus and Macaulay to Toynbee and
Fukuyama as well as historiographers such as Collingwood and Carr. Each
class deals with a specific issue and class members are expected to
take sides and defend a point of view.
The course-pack that was the basis for the programs, contains writings
by historians and essays by historiographers. The students read essays
including J.B. Bury¹s "Cleopatra's Nose," Trevelyan's
"Clio Rediscovered," Isaiah Berlin's "Historical Inevitability,"
Charles Beard's "That Noble Dream," and Turner's "The
Frontier in American History." Excerpts from historians' works
include Thucydides' "The History the Peloponnesian War," Vico's
The New Science, Toynbee's A Study of History, and Spengler's "Decline
of the West."
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October 11, 2008
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