Historians and friends: reflections on some contemporary historians*

ABSTRACT

This article is based on the text of a talk at the University of Athens in October 2018, in which I drew brief cameo portraits of five historians who inspired me and whose lives I admire: David Herlihy (1930–1991), Michael Baxandall (1933–2008), Marino Berengo (1928–2000), Hans Baron (1901–1988), and Marvin Becker (1922–2004). It is difficult to find strong common methodological or ideological ground shared by all five. Their priorities were different, their guiding lights in each case came from an internal dialogue between their own passions and the inspiration they received from teachers and readings, not by the methodological preferences that dominated the profession in their lives. What, in the end, left a deep imprint on me was their character. Their commitment was to ideas and to dialogue. National, religious, ideological, or methodological differences did not cloud their judgment of others, especially of young scholars. All five, growing up in the Fascist era, were portents of the more level tones of the liberal democracy that slowly, amid myriad obstacles, set root in the decades following 1945.     

Historiography and historians of neuroscience: towards diversity in the ISHN

This article introduces and critiques the historiographical tradition of the history of the neurosciences as it has been established in the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences (ISHN). The founding members of the ISHN were practitioner-historians, practitioners of the neurosciences with an interest in the great moments, ideas and controversies in the history of their field. The historiographical precedent set by these clinician-historians emphasized those aspects of history most interesting to them. Academic historians bring a different approach to the history of neurosciences, particularly an interest in studying the intellectual and cultural contexts of both the inherited and the forgotten ideas about the nervous system. Their approach to history has not been well presented in the ISHN, in part because the current historiographical tradition does not address their interests. This article highlights the methodological and epistemological differences between academic and practitioner-historians and discusses the difficulties that other historical societies have faced in trying to bring them together. The article then suggests ideas for symposia that might facilitate an interdisciplinary dialogue and a revised historiographical tradition that speaks to the needs of both academic and historians and practitioner historians.     

American Indian ethnohistory: Recent contributions by three historians

Finger, John R. Eastern Band of Cherokees 1819–1900. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984. xiv + 253 pp. including maps, photographs, notes, bibliography, and index. $24.95 cloth, $12.95 paper.

Miller, Christopher L. Prophetic Worlds: Indians and Whites on the Columbia Plateau. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1985. x + 174 pp. including maps, notes, bibliography, and index. $27.00 cloth.

Morrison, Kenneth M. The Embattled Northeast: The Elusive Ideal of Alliance in Abenaki‐Euramerican Relations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. x + 256 pp. including maps, notes, and index. $24.95 cloth.