[Bilimsel Haber] Gendering Historiography

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

*Gendering Historiography*
*Location:* 	Germany
<http://www.h-net.org/announce/geography.cgi?geography=Germany>

	

	

	

International Conference
Aby-Warburg-Haus, Hamburg 7- 9 November 2007

Gendering Historiography

The history of historiography is currently experiencing a remarkable
revival. After years in a state of suspended animation, the history of
historiography and the biographies of its protagonists are being
rediscovered, and for good reason: Both historical genres are undergoing
a long-overdue reorientation.

The study of national historiography has gained fresh impulses from the
history of transfer or transnational historiography. National
historiographies are now also being examined for their relationships to
other national historiographies. In the EU project “Writing National
Historiographies,“ for example, four teams are addressing questions of
mutual influence, disassociation and the interpenetration of various
national historiographies.

Biographical studies, too, have undergone methodological innovations in
recent years. Inspired by conceptual reflections on the biographical
method from neighboring disciplines (especially literary theory and
sociology), several biographies of twentieth-century historians
(including one woman) have been published in recent years (Werner Conze,
Erich Marcks, Arthur Rosenberg, Gerhard Ritter, and Selma Stern). In the
meantime, the biographical method, with its abandonment of holistic
models of the subject and his/her life, has come to represent an equal
form of historical analysis, whose legitimacy is no longer seriously
challenged given its innovative research findings. The combination of
historiographical and biographical approaches has proven especially
fruitful in these works.

Both developments, however, leave significant questions virtually
untouched: How have the field, its traditional canon, and the
biographies of its representatives been structured by the category of
gender? Which mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion underlie the
construction of the academic discipline, its canon and the professional
careers of its protagonists?

All major sub-disciplines of history – one thinks of classical social
history, political history or economic history – have not merely
undergone methodological innovations, but as a consequence of this
renewal have also come to define their object of study differently. The
history of historiography, however, which likes to portray itself as a
theoretically ambitious sub-discipline, is still hacking away at the
same old canonical subject: the writings of established historians. At
most, more attention may be paid to outsiders or – as in the
transnational perspective – to interactive processes. Unfamiliar texts,
forgotten individuals, alternative forms of historical representation,
or mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion, however, go largely unnoticed.
This is particularly true of the German historical landscape, for which
there are historical reasons.

This fateful omission, like the male-connoted image of the historian and
the gendered coding of historiography, is itself a product of history
and can be traced back to the period around 1800 when the discipline
emerged in Germany. As convincing studies of the professionalization of
the historical profession have shown, it was precisely the early
institutionalization of the field in Germany that led to the especially
sharp lines between so-called academic and non-professional history and
promoted the exclusion of women. This continues to influence the
discipline and its personnel even today.

We believe it is about time that we took a closer look at the
traditional historiographical canon, the dividing line between scholarly
and non-scholarly historical writing, and the biographies of historians,
with a focus on the category of gender.

A comparison with other countries quickly reveals that this is possible
only on an international – and in some cases certainly also
transnational – level. Initial studies have shown that in the nineteenth
century in Europe and the United States, women were excluded from the
production of (scholarly) historical writing and new constructions of
masculinity were negotiated. At the same time, women also disappeared as
a topic of historical reflection. These mechanisms of exclusion and
inclusion did not proceed in a parallel manner in all countries,
however. The borders were defined differently and their permeability
varied. The analysis of these boundaries takes us deep inside the
discussion of the very foundations of our discipline: What is historical
truth and who defines the rules governing its validity?

Based on these reflections, “Gendering Historiography” seems to us a
necessary project for the field. For that reason, an international
conference to be held at the Aby-Warburg-Haus in Hamburg from 7-9
November 2007 will address the following three thematic areas:

First, the conference will inquire into the constructions of the
(nationally) differing canons as well as the establishment of accepted
narratives from the perspective of gender history. Second, we will
examine the respective dividing lines between academic and non-academic
history for their gender-segregating and gender-hierarchical mechanisms
of inclusion and exclusion. Third, and finally, participants will look
at the gender-coded profession of the historian and contrast it with
alternative professional careers.

We call for papers which discuss any of these three subjects.

Please email a 500-1000 word abstract including your contact information
and a short CV to all two conference organizers by February 15, 2007.

Feel free to contact us with any questions.

Prof. Dr. Angelika Schaser
Angelika.Schaser at uni-hamburg.de

Dr. Angelika Epple
Angelika.Epple at uni-hamburg.de
University of Hamburg
Historical Institute
Von-Melle-Park 6
20146 Hamburg
Germany

	Prof. Dr. Angelika Schaser
Dr. Angelika Epple
University of Hamburg
Historical Institute
Von-Melle-Park 6
20146 Hamburg
Germany

+49 (0) 40-42838 - 4840
Email: angelika.epple at uni-hamburg.de <mailto:angelika.epple at uni-hamburg.de>