Turning Points in Historiography: A Cross-Cultural Perspective - Rochester Studies in Historiography

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Marc Notes: Originally published in 2002.; Includes bibliographical references and index. Publisher Marketing: Until recently almost all histories of historiography have focused on national developments or at best introduced a comparative note from a limited Western perspective. Only in the last few years have there been serious attempts to transcend these borders. The present volume examines turning points in historical thought in a variety of cultures. The essays in the first half of the book deal with fundamental reorientations in historical thinking in the pre-modern period since Antiquity, specifically in ancient Greece and China and in medieval Christian Europe, the Islamic world and again China. The essays all proceed from the premise that historical thought in none of these cultures was static but underwent profound changes over time. The essays in the second part deal with historical writing beginning with the professionalization of history in the nineteenth century. National history researched and composed around a master narrative constituted a major turning point in this period. Although the new paradigm emerged in the West, it was broadly accepted by historians throughout the world.in the twentieth century. Individual chapters deal with conceptions of scientific history in the West, a comparison of national histories in Japan, France, and the United States, and the invention of Chinese, African and Indian national histories; finally the critiques of the modern paradigm in postmodernist and postcolonial theory and a consideration of the shortcomings of these critiques. Georg Iggers is Professor Emeritus of History at the State University of New York at Buffalo; Q. Edward Wang is Associate Professor of History at Rowan University.

Contributor Bio:  Wang, Q Edward Q. Edward Wang is Professor of History and Co-ordinator of Asian Studies at Rowan University and Changjiang Professor of History at Peking University. Educated in both China and the US, he has received a fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the Chinese Studies Fellowship from the National Library, Taiwan. He has given lectures and talks at a number of institutions in North America, Europe and Asia, and has been Secretary General of the International Commission for the History and Theory of Historiography since 2005. His recent publications include Mirroring the Past: The Writing and Use of History in Imperial China (co-authored), which was a Choice Outstanding Academic Title in 2006, and A Global History of Modern Historiography (co-authored), which has been translated into Chinese, German, Greek and Russian. Contributor Bio:  Iggers, Georg G GEORG G. IGGERS is an internationally recognized authority on intellectual history and comparative international historiography. He is the author of New Directions in Historiography (1975, 1985) and The German Conception of History (1968, 1983), both published by Wesleyan University Press. Iggers is Distinguished Professor of History emeritus at the State University of New York at Buffalo.