History of the Humanities: Stories, Sources, and Challenges

Programme

Some highlights of the program: Suzanne Marchand (Louisiana) will open the summer school with a keynote lecture, followed by discussion. Hampus Östh Gustafsson (Uppsala) will offer a workshop on narratives of crisis. Herman Paul (Leiden) will lead a hands-on exercise in narrative analysis, with recent history of humanities books as primary source material. Whereas Toon van Hal (Leuven) will address the topic of “forgetting” in the history of the humanities, Paul Michael Kurtz (Ghent) will reflect on the sources that historians of the humanities can use. Julianne Nyhan (Darmstadt) will highlight a specific type of sources: oral history interviews with first-generation practitioners of digital humanities. Last but not least, Rens Bod (Amsterdam) will invite participants to join him in an exploration of current challenges and opportunities for the field.

The program would not be complete without social events (lunches, dinner) and excursions to two wonderful collections kept in Leiden. The plan is to visit the seventeenth-century Bibliotheca Thysiana as well as the Netherlands Institute for the Near East, with its rich collection of cuneiform clay tablets. The summer school itself will take place in the medieval Gravensteen (“Castle of the counts”), next to the monumental Pieterskerk (St. Peter’s Church).

Further details (reading list, assignments) will be made available in due course to all registered participants.

ECTS

3 (possible to make this 5 ECTS with an extra assignment – contact the Huizinga office for more information).