History Writing as a Narrative Art
A six-session, one-credit, pass/fail, intensive reading seminar, on the role of narrative art in historical writing and its impact in shaping the mythologies of nations and the ideologies of political actors.
The first session will begin with readings that seek to understand why narrative endures as a way of writing history. The second session will be devoted to the rhetorical qualities of narrative and their implications for the use of historical evidence. The third session will look at Natalie Zemon Davis’s microhistory and explore the relationship between narrative and historical truth. The fourth session will examine competing classics of nineteenth-century historical narration, Michelet's and Tocqueville’s histories of the French Revolution, and the fifth will look at how a contemporary historian, Christopher Clark, handles competing and overlapping narratives in The Sleepwalkers (2012) on the origins of World War I. A final session will contrast ‘warring narratives’ devoted to the history of the present: Vladimir Putin’s ‘On the historical unity of the Russians and Ukrainians’ (2021) vs. Serhii Plokhy’s The Russo-Ukrainian War (2023).
Michael Ignatieff is Rector Emeritus of Central European University and a Professor of History at CEU. He is the author of several works of history, including On Consolation, The Needs of Strangers, and The Russian Album.
- Instructor: Michael Ignatieff