bielefeld–wesleyan theory of history workshop

metahistorical categories and beliefs 

in historical writing

november 2–3, 2023 @ wesleyan university

program

november 2, 2023

Panels will be held in the Center for the Humanities Seminar Room.

10:00–10:30, Coffee and Pastries (Center for the Humanities Lounge)

10:30–11:00, Welcome and Introductions

11:00–12:00, Panel 1

  • David Gary Shaw (Wesleyan University), “Fighting for Time: Eternity versus History”

  • Lisa Regazzoni (Bielefeld University), “Transience as Permanent Background Noise in the Historian’s Workshop”

12:00-1:00, Lunch for Participants (Center for the Humanities Lounge)

1:00–2:00, Panel 2

  • Matthew Specter (University of California, Berkeley), “‘Great-Power Competition’: Transhistorical Universal or Metahistorical Folly?”

  • Jannik Seidler (Bielefeld University), “Breaking the Frame of Immanence: Historiography in a Post-Secular Age”

2:00–2:20, Break

2:20–3:50, Panel 3

  • Ethan Kleinberg (Wesleyan University), “Deconstructing Historicist Time”

  • Franz-Josef Arlinghaus (Bielefeld University), “Is Referring to Time as a Cause in Historical Argumentation a Metahistorical Category? And What Is Actually Meant by ‘Time’ When It Is Referred to as a Cause?”

  • Maja-Lisa Müller (Bielefeld University), “Containing as Time-Space-Relation”

6:30, Dinner for Participants, at Esca (437 Main Street, Middletown, CT)

november 3, 2023

Panels will be held in the Center for the Humanities Seminar Room.

* In order to accommodate the hotel change this evening, participants are encouraged to bring their luggage to the Center for the Humanities, where it can be locked in the History and Theory office (first floor, in the library).

10:00–11:00, Coffee and Pastries (Center for the Humanities Lounge)

11:00–12:00, Panel 1

  • Marcus Wystub (Bielefeld University), “Spectrality as a Metahistorical Category? How Hauntology Shapes the Historiography of Historical Injustice”

  • Christian Wachter (Bielefeld University), “Scaling History: Events and Objects in Research and Digital Narrative”

12:00-1:00, Lunch for Participants (Center for the Humanities Lounge)

1:00–2:00, Panel 2

  • Courtney Weiss Smith (Wesleyan University), “Words in/for History”

  • Britta Hochkirchen (Friedrich Schiller University Jena), “On the Ghostability of a Medium: Photographic Effects as Extra-Historical Phenomena”

2:00–2:20, Break

2:20–3:20, Panel 3

  • Valeria López Fadul (Wesleyan University), “Not More Is Possible: Conjecture in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Histories of Spain and Latin America”

  • Jana Kristin Hoffmann (Bielefeld University), “Forgetting and Its Omnipresence in the Work of the Historian”

3:30–4:30, Wrap-Up Session

4:30–5:30, Reception (Center for the Humanities Lounge)

5:30, Shuttle to New Haven for Guests