ANTHROPOCENE TIME

Beginning with the question of how a sense of geological time remains strangely withdrawn in contemporary discussions of the Anthropocene in the human sciences and yields place to the more human‐centered time of world history, this article proceeds to discuss the differences between human‐historical time and the time of geology as they relate to the concept of the Anthropocene. The article discusses the difficulty of developing a mode of thinking about the present that would attempt to hold together these two rather different senses of time and ends with a ground‐clearing exercise that might enable the development of such thought.     

美国少年历史小说题材创作

历史小说是美国少年小说的一个重要类型。自20世纪30年代以后,反映少年生活的历史小说在美国不断问世,并于60、70年代进入繁荣阶段。本文旨在通过梳理美国少年历史小说的发展脉络,探讨其潮流及特点,如发展阶段、文化内涵、审美价值观等,说明其文学成就与影响,同时加深我国对美国少年历史小说的了解和研究。     

一个展览和一个时代——“明永乐宣德文物特展”设计综述

"明永乐宣德文物特展"是一个全面展现明早期艺术的综合性文物大展。展览的最终目的是要激发大众对传统艺术的兴趣,令其得到文化的熏陶与艺术的启迪,因此,展览陈列设计所要考虑的是一个多层次的体系。首先提炼装饰元素作为视觉主题,将艺术品的美感尽可能展现给观众,同时还要向观者传递时代背景、皇帝的思想境界等信息。此外,设计者还精心挑选不同的装饰材料以营造新颖的展示环境,达到衬托文物高超工艺水平的目的。     

美国早期史研究中的自我探索与历史叙事 --评《透过一块晦暗的玻璃》

《透过一块晦暗的玻璃》体现了美国早期史研究领域的较新的发展趋势。这本论文集从小历史的角度来论述了早期美国史研究中关于个人认同的自我探索与边缘化状态的问题,并较好地弥补了大历史的缺陷,使人们从历史叙述、文本细读和语言学转向这三个方面更新了对小历史长处的认识。     

胡适与庄子研究

胡适在20世纪中国庄学研究史上占有重要地位.他尝试运用西方哲学体系研究<庄子>,推动了庄子研究范式的转换.胡适对庄子人生哲学展开了激烈批判,对庄子反科学主义思想既有所批判,又努力挖掘庄书中所包含的生物进化论思想.最近20余年来,庄子研究范式又得到了新的救正.     

Matthew Paris on the writing of history

Matthew Paris was one of the most prolific and influential historians of the central middle ages. Matthew's significance rests both on the range of his interests and the scope of his writing. Yet, even basic questions about his outlook on writing, his concept of history, or the relationship with his audience, have hardly been asked. These issues are central themes of this article, and will be used to consider wider questions about Matthew's concept of truth, his handling of information, and his view of the world around him. The article, furthermore, extends coverage beyond the Chronica majora or Matthew's vernacular writings to consider his concept of history as it emerges from the totality of his oeuvre.     

THE SYNTAX OF OBJECTS AND THE REPRESENTATION OF HISTORY: SPEAKING OF SLAVERY IN NEW YORK

The representation of history continues to evolve in the domain of museum exhibitions. This evolution is informed in part by the creation of new display methods—many of which depart from the traditional conventions used to achieve the "museum effect"—in part by an increased attention to the museum-visitor relationship. In this context the ethical force of bearing witness, at times a crucial aspect of the museum experience, has emerged as a particularly compelling issue. In seeking to represent and address atrocity, injustice, and the abrogation of human rights, museums have the potential to become "sites of conscience" and to encourage "historical consciousness." Through a series of three exhibitions devoted to slavery, the New-York Historical Society demonstrated how such sites can be constructed and how objects can be deployed to represent extreme or "limit cases." In this review/essay I investigate and interrogate these exhibitions, looking closely at the use of objects as a source of "indirect testimony" (Marc Bloch) and at the "dialogical situation" (Paul Ricoeur) that might arise in an encounter among objects, exhibit narratives, and visitors. Thinking in terms of point of view, I look at the variety of rhetorical platforms from which objects speak in these exhibitions; thinking in terms of syntax, I look at the effects of ordering and of the radical juxtaposition of objects; thinking in terms of irony, I look at the provocations of double-voiced narratives and at how objects are used to support those historical sentences.     

Slaves, servants and wage earners: Free and unfree labour, from Grotius to Blackstone

This article provides an intellectual history of the status of wage earners as conceptualized within the natural law paradigm by European writers both on the Continent and in Britain. Historians of political discourse have mostly investigated the consequences of such a status for the political rights of labourers. This article shows that the crucial moves were made by different authors analysing the relation of servant to master either in the domestic sphere or in private contracts. The article further contends that that resulting deeply ambiguous analyses implied a far from complete personal freedom for wage earners. This had a decisive impact on different visions of commercial society in early modern times, and left a significant legacy for moderns.     

HISTORY AS PHILOSOPHY

Historians have taken a beating in recent times from an array of critics troubled by our persistent unwillingness to properly theorize our work. This essay contends that their criticisms have generally failed to make headway among mainstream historians owing to a little noticed cognitive byproduct of our work that I call history as philosophy. In so doing I offer a novel defense of professional history as it has been understood and practiced in the Anglophone world over the last half‐century or so while suggesting, in conclusion, that historians could not do other than they do without serious psychic and societal loss.