A little over a year ago, Kerstin von der Krone joined Goethe University Frankfurt am Main as head of the J. C. Senckenberg University Library's Judaica Division. As a result, she is stepping back from day-to-day involvement with this blog. Mark Stoneman, an editor–historian at the German Historical Institute Washington DC (GHI), remains, and three colleagues, all GHI research fellows, are joining him: Anna-Carolin Augustin, Mario Peters, and Claudia Roesch.
Post Type: Notices & Tips
Reading Tip: ‘The Book That Would Not Die’
Donna Gabaccia reflects on the reception of William Foote Whyte’s famous Street Corner Society at the Migrant Knowledge blog:
William Foote Whyte’s study of Italian immigrants in the North End of Boston was not particularly successful after its release in 1943. In the years after 1970, though, Street Corner Society garnered great success and became, in the words of its author, “the book that would not die.” Paradoxically, specialists in Italian American studies found little to love in the book. Here I argue that a hidden history of gender and ethnic dynamics in the academic production of knowledge can explain the paradox. . . .
German Studies and the History of Knowledge
We are publishing the following information in conjunction with the German Studies Association’s 2020 virtual conference, which runs from September 29 to October 4.
With instructors and students facing many more months of online teaching and learning, I would like to briefly highlight some blog posts in the history of knowledge that might prove useful to those working on various aspects of German history, culture, society, and language. The selection comes from two blogs that I co-edit for the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC, and its Pacific Regional Office at UC Berkeley, namely, History of Knowledge and Migrant Knowledge. I was initially inspired to identify such pieces by the German Studies Collaboratory’s own efforts to foster collaboration and experimentation during the pandemic. Appropriately, none of the articles are behind a password or paywall, and their average length is only some 2,000 words. They might be useful for students’ own research or for assigned class readings. If you are using blog posts as assignments, the posts in this list might also serve as instructive examples, for better or for worse, depending on the assignments you envision.
Continue reading “German Studies and the History of Knowledge”
Historicizing Knowledge
Recently there has been a lot of chatter on academic Twitter reflecting on the need to decolonize various academic fields. Such impulses go to the heart of what histories of knowledge are: People produce, use, translate, and pass on knowledge in specific socio-cultural contexts. Knowledge has a history, and much of that history is bound up with the histories of fields and professions.
Knowledge Notes
POSTDOC VACANCY: The Restitution of Knowledge: Artefacts as Archives in the (Post)Colonial Museum, 1850-1939. TU Berlin, April 15, 2020, to April 14, 2022. Application deadline: March 20, 2020. (HT @an_augusti)
CALL FOR PAPERS: The Technology Behind Media Misinformation: The Creation, Detection and Investigation of Fake News. “The Digital Humanities/Digital Scholarship Special Interest Group is calling for presenters to participate in their open session at the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Dublin, Ireland, from August 15-20, 2020.” Deadline: March 25, 2020. (HT @SwenSteinberg for this and the next two calls .)
Continue reading “Knowledge Notes”Follow-Up: Knowledge and Politics
What is the history of knowledge? That bigger question came up more than once at the conference Political Culture and the History of Knowledge, as Kijan Espahangizi and Monika Wulz’s report shows. One helpful response to the debates were the 5 Tenets that Shadi Bartsch initially posted on Twitter for the SIFK.
Calendar: Global Histories of the Social Survey in the Long Nineteenth Century
Workshop at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, February 18-19, 2020, in cooperation with the Leibniz-Institute of European History in Mainz.
Knowledge Notes
Stephanie Leitsch is teaching the 44th International Wolfenbüttel Summer Course, entitled “Early Modern Visual Data: Organizing Knowledge in Printed Books.”
As prints taught viewers how to observe and thus arguably democratized knowledge derived from first-hand experience, this seminar considers printed images as critical visual technology that built knowledge acquisition. . . .
Knowledge Notes
- Fellowship: Binational Visiting Fellow Tandem Program in the History of Migration at GHI Pacific Regional Office in Berkeley. Application deadline: January 15, 2020. (Why migration on a blog about knowledge? See the Knowledge and Migration page on this site.)
- Reading: Martin Collins and Teasel Muir-Harmony, eds., Making the Pacific: Making Japanese-U.S. Relations: Science and Technology as Historical Agents in the Twentieth Century, special issue, Pacific Historical Review 88, no. 4 (Fall 2019): 509–658.
Knowledge Notes
- Call for Papers: “Entangled Pasts and Presents: Temporal Interactions and Knowledge Production in the Study of Hellenistic Central Asia.” Fourth Conference of the Hellenistic Central Asia Research Network. Proposal deadline: November 15, 2019. HT @hsozkult.
- Call for Papers: “Indigenous Knowledges,” special issue of KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies. Proposal deadline: November 30, 2019.
Continue reading “Knowledge Notes”