Seminar on the Theory and Practice of History
The Seminar on the Theory and Practice of History at Wesleyan University is devoted to cultivating a series of talks on topics related to the theory and philosophy of history as well as issues of historiography and its history, including the methodology, style, and form of historical research and writing. Its aim is to stimulate reflection on these subjects within the university and the region and to help to channel and accelerate wider discussion of these topics.
The 2025–2026 Seminar series is as follows:
November 20, 2025 – Paul Roth (UC Santa Cruz), “Escaping the Positivist Trap” (Boger Hall, room 113)
March 26, 2026 – Julia Nowakowska (University of Warsaw), “The Historiography of the Chronicle of Galbert of Bruges” (Boger Hall, room 113)
May 7, 2026 – Samuel Backer (University of Maine), “Hempel's Computer: Digital Quantification and the Production of Historical Knowledge” (Boger Hall, room 113)
Unless otherwise indicated, seminars are held at 4:30 pm on Wesleyan University’s campus. The seminars are based on precirculated papers.
Past Series
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Oct. 31, 2024: Berber Bevernage (Ghent University) and Kate Temoney (Montclair State University), “Keeping Faith in History: Historiography, Memory Studies, and the Grammar of Religion”
Dec. 4, 2024: Ana Laura Camargo Cunha (São Paulo State University), “The Spectral Simultaneity of the Nonsimultaneous and the Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen”
Feb. 20, 2025: Carolyn Biltoft (Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies), “Henri Bergson’s Mal d’archives: A Philosopher of Memory’s Quest for Oblivion”
Apr. 3, 2025: Wolfram Schmidgen (Washington University, St. Louis), “The Object Lovers: Intellectual Life and the Limits of the Human”
May 8, 2025: Luis de Mussy Roa (Adolfo Ibanez University), “Avant-garde Historiographies. Found Objects and Writing Regimes”
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Sept. 28, 2023: Stefan Tanaka (UCSD), “What Can Pasts Do?”
Nov. 2–3, 2023: Bielefeld–Wesleyan Theory of History Workshop
Apr. 11, 2024: Alexandra Lianeri (University of Thessaloniki), “Dēmokratia’s Syncopated Time: Foucault on Parrhesia and Athenian Democracy”
May 2, 2024: Christopher Given-Wilson (University of St. Andrews), “Witness Authority and the Nature of Evidence in the Middle Ages”
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September 15: Lisa Regazzoni, Bielefeld University, “The Elementary Particles of Historicity”
October 6: Achim Landwehr, Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, “Chronoreferences and the Void”
February 23: Stefanos Geroulanos, New York University, “Historical Epistemology and the Sources of NonConceptual Meaning?”
April 20: Ewa Domanska, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań and Stanford University, “The Turn towards the Indigenous in Historical Theory”
May 11: Daniel Woolf, Queen’s University, “Can we Learn from the Past? The Case for and Against”
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March 3: Jeff Rider, Wesleyan University, “Compilation as Historiographical Method in the Middle Ages”
April 21: Meltem Toksoz, Wesleyan University, “Coping with Orientalism: Ottoman History Writing in the Nineteenth Century”
May 12: Vanita Seth, University of California, Santa Cruz, “The Faceless Premodern”
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*Please note: The 2019-2020 series was disrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The following list shows the seminars as they were planned to take place (prior to the pandemic).
November 14: Stefka Eriksen, Norwegian Institute of Cultural Heritage, “The Archaeology and Allegory of the Settlement of Iceland: Reflections on the Theory and Method of Interdisciplinary Environmental History”
February 6: Heather Keenleyside, University of Chicago: “The Literary History of the History of Ideas”
March 5: Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen, University of Oulu, “How to Get it Wrong: Historiography, Normativity and the Holocaust Debate”
March 26: Achim Landwehr, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Dusseldorf, “Heiner – Hamlet – Hans. Chronoferences and the Power of ghosts”
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September 27: Sumit Guha, University of Texas at Austin, “The Social Frames of Historical Narrative: A Comparative Approach”
October 25: Gabrielle Spiegel, The Johns Hopkins University, “The Limits of Empiricism: The Utility of Theory in Historical Thought and Writing”
February 7: Anna Krylova, Duke University, “The Human Actor, Agency, and Historical Analysis”
April 4: Andrea M. Frisch, University of Maryland, “The Inhumanity of Universal History: Agrippa d’Aubigné and the Question of Historiographical Neutrality”
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September 18: Gary Wilder, City University of New York, Graduate Center, “The Place of Time in the Practice of History”
March 8: Jonas Grethlein, Heidelberg University, “The Universal in the Particular: A Core Dilemma of Historicism in Antiquity”
April 12: Beatrice Han-Pile, Sussex University, “Hope and Agency”
May 3: Nancy Rose Hunt, University of Florida, “Ideation and Historical Writing”
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November 10: Carolyn Dean, Yale University, “The Making of the Secular Witness, 1921 to the Present”
December 8: Jaume Aurell, Universidad de Navarra, “The Historicity of Historical Genres”
February 23: Kathleen Davis, University of Rhode Island, “Periodization, History, and the Force of Law.”
March 9: Willibald Steinmetz, Bielefeld University, “Multiple Transformations: Temporal Frameworks for a European Conceptual History”
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October 22: Jeffrey Andrew Barash, Université de Picardie, “Collective Memory and Historical Time”
January 28: Helge Jordheim, University of Oslo (New York University 2015-16), “Maps of Time: Tables, Trees, Grids.”
March 3: Eileen Ka-May Cheng, Sarah Lawrence College, “Plagiarism and the Nationalist Uses of Loyalist History: Alexander Hewatt and David Ramsay”
April 28: Philip Gorski, Yale University, “The Matter of Emergence”
Image: Photo taken at the 1912 Republican National Convention held at the Chicago Coliseum, Chicago, Illinois, June 18-22, from Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.