We are happy to announce the upcoming 2017 International Conference
“History & Society – Dialogue of the Deaf” taking place on 31st of
August and 1st of September in Warsaw, Poland. All the PhD students and
young researchers are invited to sumbit an abstract or attend as free
listeners.
The main aim of the conference is to restimulate the reflections on
the interrelations between social sciences and history. This theme is an
object of the century-old but lively controversy. Social history gained
its momentum as a result of works of researchers associated with the
famous Annales journal, such as Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, in the
first half of the 20th century, who refocused their inquiries from the
outdated “event history” to the analyses of social structures and
phenomena constructing historical events. 1960s witnessed the
breakthrough of “new social history” which soon transformed the
discipline into the dominating historiographical trend of the Anglophone
world. In the 1990s its prominent position was endangered by one member
of its intellectual offspring, cultural history.
Basing on the data from British and Irish universities, where 26% of
academic historians identify with social history, it is the most common
approach to writing history. Nonetheless, many eminent researchers
still disregard its importance. In the light of these voices, it seems
necessary to reconsider the relations between history, society, and
culture.
We hereby invite to discuss that matter. Both Polish and non-Polish
scholars, as well as the representatives of such disciplines as history,
social sciences, art history, archaeology, geography, anthropology,
cultural studies and others will be welcome to present their research
reports at the conference.
We plan to organise the referees’ presentations in three separate
sections: 1. Theory and Methodology, 2. Practice and Examples, and 3.
Future Perspectives of developing the fields in question. The conference
panels will be related, but are not limited to:
– the problem of “dialogue of the deaf” between historians and sociologists,
– social history and historical sociology,
– historical geography and demography,
– cultural history,
– memory studies,
– new historiographical trends, including the posthumanistic approaches,
– history of the interdisciplinary-oriented historiography,
– methodological aspects of socio-historical research.
As we plan to organise panels according to the language of
presentations, and as Poland is the host for the conference, abstracts
in English as well as in Polish are welcome.
