The Oral Historian as Memorist

This paper explores some issues in relation to oral historyand memory that emerge in Alessandro Portelli's The Order HasBeen Carried Out. I examine the contemporary role of the oralhistorian, the relationship between the present and the pastin memory work, and make some comments about how we might articulatethe field of oral history with memory studies more closely forthe enrichment of both.     

History, Memory, and the Law: The Historian as Expert Witness

There has been a widespread recovery of public memory of the events of the Second World War since the end of the 1980s, with war crimes trials, restitution actions, monuments and memorials to the victims of Nazism appearing in many countries. This has inevitably involved historians being called upon to act as expert witnesses in legal actions, yet there has been little discussion of the problems that this poses for them. The French historian Henry Rousso has argued that this confuses memory with history. In the aftermath of the Second World War, judicial investigations unearthed a mass of historical documentation. Historians used this, and further researches, from the 1960s onwards to develop their own ideas and interpretations. But since the early 1990s there has been a judicialization of history, in which historians and their work have been forced into the service of moral and legal forms of judgment which are alien to the historical enterprise and do violence to the subleties and nuances of the historian's search for truth. This reflects Rousso's perhaps rather simplistically scientistic view of the historian's enterprise; yet his arguments are powerful and should be taken seriously by any historian considering involvement in a law case; they also have a wider implication for the moralization of the history of the Second World War, which is now dominated by categories such as "perpetrator,""victim," and "bystander" that are legal rather than historical in origin. The article concludes by suggesting that while historians who testify in war crimes trials should confine themselves to elucidating the historical context, and not become involved in judging whether an individual was guilty or otherwise of a crime, it remains legitimate to offer expert opinion, as the author of the article has done, in a legal action that turns on the research and writing of history itself.     

The Task of the Historian

Book reviewed in this article:
Gabrielle M. Spiegel, The past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography     

The Historian and the Church

DEREK BEALES AND GEOFFREY BEST, eds. History, Society and the Churches: Essays in Honour of Owen Chadwick. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Pp. x, 335. $49.50 (US).     

The Journalist as Historian: Anthony Lewis, Civil Liberties, and the Supreme Court

The genesis of the column that Anthony Lewis wrote for The New York Times between 1969 and 2001 was a red face—not Lewis's, but that of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger. The Times ' publisher offered Lewis the column as a consolation prize after outgoing executive editor James Reston mistakenly informed Lewis that the job of deputy to A. M. Rosenthal, the new executive editor, was open and that Lewis was a logical candidate. ¹     

评中国古代史学的“史才”论

本文考察了中国古代典籍中“史才”的不同概念 ,认为“史才”在中国古代具有三种既相互关联又有所区别的概念 ,即史学主体综合素质之一 (修史的才能 )、史学主体的综合素质 (才、学、识、德 )、史学主体 (史学人才 )。由于“史才”最基本的含义是修史才能 ,为史学工作者职业身份确定的标志 ,因此它也成为包括史学“三长”及“史德”在内的史学主体综合素质的代称 ,并进而指代史学主体本身。从“史才”概念出发 ,弄清其不同含义及其相互关系 ,有助于加深对古代史学主体素质理论的认识和探讨。     

An Historian in the Amazon

However private they may seem, emotions depend for their meanings on the communities in which they are expressed. But if emotions are shaped by and for their communities, how can we account for emotional change? After briefly surveying how historians have (1) defined the communities in which emotions have been expressed and (2) explained how and why emotions have changed, this article turns to the community of the Waorani of Amazonian Ecuador. It explores whether anthropological explanations of emotional change in that “test case” may help the historian. The answer is not entirely positive. The article concludes with some thoughts about what sorts of collaborations between historians and anthropologists might be more productive for emotions studies.     

杰里·H．本特利教授学术报告纪要

2004年10月19日,美国夏威夷大学教授、《世界历史杂志》主编、美国世界史协会会长 杰里·H.本特利(Jerry H.Bentley)在中国社会科学院世界历史研究所作了题为"世界历史 的昨天、今天和明天"的学术报告。本特利教授以宏观的理论视野,勾勒出在漫长的时间跨 度中世界历史研究的发展脉络及其研究范式的转变。 本特利教授认为,世界历史在最早的历史著作中即已出现。在古代世界,西方与东方的 历史学家在立足本民族历史研究的同时,开始将眼光投向更为广阔的外部世界,注重不同民 族与地区之间的联系。中世纪的编年史家则常常以《圣经》中的创世说和不同民族的起源作     

Beyond the Foreign Office Papers: The Making of an International Historian

This article reflects on the changing discipline of diplomatic history/international history through the author's own experience in the field since the 1950s. It also draws wider lessons about the craft, especially the importance of understanding the people behind the papers – illustrated with vignettes of diplomats whom the author interviewed, including Harold Nicolson, William Strang and Owen O'Malley. Woven into this is some discussion of the author's own books, especially those on the pre-1914 Foreign Office, Britain and the origins of the First World War and, most recently, her two volumes on Europe's international relations between the world wars.