Prof. Rens Bod (Univ. of Amsterdam) The History of the Humanities as an Emerging Field. 

Manchester History of Humanities Research Network

Thursday 11 May, 17.00 to 19.00, Christie Room, John Rylands Library
Seminar: Professor Rens Bod (Univeristy of Amsterdam)
 The History of the Humanities as an Emerging Field
 
Despite a growing number of <A HREF="http://www.historyofhumanities.org/" TARGET="_blank" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">conferences</A>, <A HREF="http://www.historyofhumanities.org/resources/" TARGET="_blank" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">monographs, edited books</A> and a <A HREF="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/hoh/current" TARGET="_blank" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">new journal</A> on the history of the humanities, there is no academic discipline called “History of Humanities”. This is surprising since humanists are among the most historically minded scholars. How can it be that humanists care about the history of everything – including the history of science -- except about their own history? The situation is of course more subtle: there is historiography of philology, of history writing, of art history, of musicology, of literary studies, and more, but what is missing is an academic discipline that explores the history of the humanities together. In this talk I will argue that for the "humanities" to be more than just an umbrella term, this bewildering gap in intellectual history must be remedied. An important goal for the emerging field of “History of Humanities” is to explore both shared and divergent practices, methods and virtues in these disciplines. I will discuss a number of challenges for such a history, ranging from presentism to comparativism, and argue in favour of a global historiography of the humanistic disciplines.
Co-hosted by the Manchester History of Humanities Network and the John Rylands Research Institute