With the term “epistemological fragility,” Jenkins refers to the innate inability of history as a discipline to know with absolute certainty and in their entirety the events of the past. To some extent, Jenkins portrays this aspect of history as the proverbial self-licking ice cream cone. History is unable, due to the sheer magnitude of …
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What is the purpose of history?
I have tended to view the purpose of history from the standpoints of two earlier writers: Leopold von Ranke and George Santayana. The opinion of Santayana is very well known: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it..” Ranke’s is perhaps less well known, i.e., to portray the past “wie es eigentlich gewesen ist” …
Short-term Plans and New Posts
Just a quick note to update my short-range plans. I’m taking my third and final course at U. Edinburgh this term — a methodology class called “Historical Research: Approaches to History.” It’s quite a bit of writing, so I expect to post quite a bit here over the next few months. I will finish at …
Rethinking Kishinev: The 1903 Pogrom in Time and Space
In his 2016 book about anti-Jewish violence in the Russian Empire, the German historian Stefan Wiese pointed out that the word pogrom (along with steppe) was one of few Russian words that had entered the lexicons of virtually every European language. However, he noted, it was not until the April 1903 pogrom in Kishinev, Bessarabia, that this effect …
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Russia in the Long Nineneeth Century
Since its initial conceptualization by Eric Hobsbawm in his Age of trilogy of books, the “long nineteenth century” has become an historiographical commonplace, finding enunciation beyond Marxist history and into other historical approaches. In The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914, C.A. Bayly applies the long century concept to world history, both expanding the range of dates to start …
Antinomies of Empire II
In this week’s readings, we return to the topic of Antinomies of Empire. Given the changes in the borders of the Russian Empire between the reigns of Catherine the Great and Nicholas II, our readings for the week include discussions of ethnic groups not engaged in previous weeks, as well as a return to more …
Serfdom: The Foundation of Russian Power?
Like many of the readings in this course thus far, those for this week seek to challenge some of our foregoing assumptions about a Russian person or institution. The question posed on the syllabus for the week regards whether serfdom formed the foundation of Russian power. The answer to this question would seem to hinge …
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Vacation in Barbados
I had the first meeting of my current grad history class in imperial Russian history two days ago. The professor is extraordinarily highly regarded in the field and show tremendous enthusiasm, which is always nice to see. As I mentioned elsewhere, I’m unsure what my major research topic will be for the term, but I …
Tempus Fugit
And that quickly, a month has gone by since I’ve written here. By way of a quick update, my current plan is to take a graduate-level Russian history class at Penn in the fall and another graduate-level history course at Edinburgh in the spring, the latter probably a methodology. Finishing the third class at Edinburgh …
Twitter Threads
It’s been a while since I’ve written, so a few updates seem in order. First, I aced my Jewish History class, so I’m happy about that. I’ll apply (again) to the M.A. program in history in the fall, hopefully with better luck than before. In the meantime, whether I’ll take a course at Edinburgh, Penn, …
Inevitable Historicity 