#timesmonster

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TIME’S MONSTER: How History Makes History by Priya Satia / @harvardpress - Design by #HenrySeneYee; AD: Timothy Jones - #TimesMonster #PriyaSatia #bookcover #bookcoverdesign #bookjacket #bookjacketdesign https://www.instagram.com/p/CGnMbFBhube/?igshid=f862xvkeg1le

[eeverestresearch]

https://www.chronicle.com/article/beyond-the-end-of-history

By Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, Chronicle of Higher Education, 14.08.2020

D S-J explains the anathema of presentism ingrained in largely conservative Anglo-American historical academic institutions and practice. Proposes that the goal should be to “jettison crude versions of presentism without abandoning presentism altogether”

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Thoughts on this: 

However subconsciously, each generation of historians brings the concerns of its own time. Even in the case of ancient history, scholars seek and frame issues of the past in ways that hold relevance to them. Why not lean into this, and while avoiding e.g. drawing anachronistic parallels to the present, take seriously the undeniable fact that current forces will always shape our thinking? Perhaps not only acknowledging but harnessing the concerns of our time may prove fruitful for shedding light on issues sidelined by past generations, who were led by their own agendas, different to our own.

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Victoria Smolkin on ‘historical literacy’ 

Priya Satia’s upcoming book: Time’s Monster: How History Makes History 

“I know people say, ‘the past is another country,’” Satia says. “But the present is another country too — that is, it is a totally contingent outcome of the past.”