History in the First Person: From Antiquity to Our Time
On August 24-26 the post-graduate humanities summer school 'History in the First Person: From Antiquity to Our Time' will be held at HSE. The event is organized by HSE Faculty of Humanities, the Centre of Franco-Russian Research in Moscow, the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (Paris), and Eastern Studies Research Group of Strasbourg University. Expert lecturers will take part in discussions of the research projects presented by participants.
The purpose of the Franco-Russian forum is to learn how an individual voice or author sounded, or was fixed in texts and images from ancient times, and to determine which research strategies historians, philologists and philosophers should apply to discover that voice.
Medieval historian, Professor at the Faculty of Humanities and one of the organisers of the summer school Oleg Voskoboynikov explains:
‘The idea of the summer school is to have a dialogue between professors and history, philosophy and literature students at several European universities. The organisers have laid plans for about 30 students to take part in discussions in French and English. All of us, historians, linguists, philosophers and specialists in culture are united by an interest in listening to history as told in the first person singular. It might sound banal but the question of methodology is not at all simple. That’s why we have suggested a broad chronological framework with no limits on geography. So we can ‘synchronise our watches’ and compare methods used by very varied researchers in looking for living human voices. The Early Modern Period is the the most well represented on the programme as it was then that individual voices began to be heard more often in concrete texts. Even so, some of the lectures on Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance show us that individual voices could be heard then as loudly as they are today.’
Ego History, the history of subjectivity, new biography, the history of autobiography - are all areas of study of a wide field in contemporary humanities where philosophers, literary scholars, historians, sociologists and art historians are producing new research. They examine primarily texts, written or recorded in the first person - correspondence, diaries, autobiographies, poetry, memoirs, wills, denunciations, interrogations, interviews, contracts, and books of remembrance from medieval monasteries. Sources of this kind of information - from medieval manuscripts to blogs - are as varied as the approaches to their analysis. These approaches have significantly enriched our dialogue with past societies in the last decade, having revealed new and intriguing epistemological perspectives.
Until recently the diary, like anecdotal evidence in general, would be used to illustrate an argument, to provide a representative example in order to understand the systems and structure of large periods of time. But now the status of personal experience, the unrepeatable gesture, even a word accidently discarded, but recorded by history has changed radically. In other words, history has discovered direct speech. It is this direct speech, when we can hear it or decipher it as evidence of antiquity or the present, that interests the organisers and participants in the summer school.
The summer school will consider the following:
- A conversation about oneself and the work of a character rethinking and rearranging their own experience when they describe it.
- Letters and other forms of creativity as self-reflection.
- Letters, involved in personal and collective forms, fields of argument and criticism in which a personal position is born, ripens and finds expression.
- The individual voice, multiple voices, polyphony and cacophony.
- The language of subjectivity, cultural, religious, political codes, usages and habits.
- Censorship, self-censorship, coded language.
- The authorial I in poetry and prose.
- The grammar of first person speech: problems with sources and methodology with texts and other materials.
‘For me, personally,’ concludes Voskoboynikov, ‘this summer school is important because it is our first big project with EHESS, my alma mater, which has recently become our official partner. Besides, we are in discussions about long term cooperation with the University of Strasbourg, one of the biggest universities in France. CEFR has been working with HSE since it began. They are our trusted friends and we must nurture that friendship.’
See also:
How the Telephone Conquered the World. Episode Ten: 'Number, Please?'
The history of the invention of telephony reads like a captivating detective novel, but even more intriguing are the events that contributed to the worldwide adoption of this technology. In this series of columns on IQ.HSE, Anton Basov, HSE Faculty of Computer Science editor, discusses how telephones have become an integral part of our everyday life. The final episode of the series recounts how men were unable to cope with telephone operator jobs and were replaced by tall and polite young women. However, as telephone networks expanded, the role of the intermediary became unproductive, eventually rendering the switchboard operator profession obsolete due to automation—not the first nor the last time such a thing has happened. As for Alexander Graham Bell, he used the earnings from inventing the telephone to promote science, educate people about the world around us, and pursue new inventions.
How the Telephone Conquered the World. Episode Nine: Big Connections
The history of the invention of telephony reads like a captivating detective novel, but even more intriguing are the events that contributed to the worldwide adoption of this technology. In this series of columns on IQ.HSE, Anton Basov, HSE Faculty of Computer Science editor, discusses how telephones have become an integral part of our everyday life. The ninth episode of the series explores the development of the first long-distance, interstate, and transatlantic telephone lines, which suddenly made people thousands of kilometres away feel as close as if they were in the same room together.
How the Telephone Conquered the World. Episode Eight: The Russian Field of Experiments
The history of the invention of telephony reads like a captivating detective novel, but even more intriguing are the events that contributed to the worldwide adoption of this technology. In this series of columns on IQ.HSE, Anton Basov, HSE Faculty of Computer Science editor, discusses how telephones have become an integral part of our everyday life. The eighth episode of the series recounts how Russia first adapted the telephone for military and logistical purposes, created a shell company headed by a nominal executive for reselling the rights to Western competitors, and intensively developed communication infrastructure in the country's two capitals, making such progress that Vladimir Lenin insisted on capturing and maintaining control of telephone exchanges at all costs.
How the Telephone Conquered the World. Episode Seven: German Efficiency
The history of the invention of telephony reads like a captivating detective novel, but even more intriguing are the events that contributed to the worldwide adoption of this technology. In this series of columns on IQ.HSE, Anton Basov, HSE Faculty of Computer Science editor, discusses how telephones have become an integral part of our everyday life. The seventh episode in the series recounts the story of German bureaucrats, who proved to be the most astute in Europe by ensuring effective telephony first for themselves and subsequently for all major cities in Germany. However, even there, the government's dominant role over the free market slowed down the adoption of the new technology.
How the Telephone Conquered the World. Episode Six: The Telephone's Misadventures in France
The history of the invention of telephony reads like a captivating detective novel, but even more intriguing are the events that contributed to the worldwide adoption of this technology. In this series of columns on IQ.HSE, Anton Basov, HSE Faculty of Computer Science editor, discusses how telephones have become an integral part of our everyday life. The sixth episode of the series recounts events in France when the private owner of the telephone network was compelled to sell it to the government at a knockdown price, and the impact it had on the development of communications in the country. Spoiler alert: the impact, naturally, was detrimental.
How the Telephone Conquered the World. Episode Five: From the US Free Market to Conservative Britain
In this series of columns on IQ.HSE, Anton Basov, HSE Faculty of Computer Science editor, discusses how telephones have become an integral part of our everyday life. The fifth episode of the series chronicles the early experiences of the telegraph and telephone in Great Britain, shedding light on the challenges they faced, and explores the adverse impact of excessive government regulation and nationalisation on the evolution of telecommunications.
Peacocks, Pepper, and Petrol: The Early History of Imports from Asia
Petroleum for equine care, wood oil for lighting, sandalwood for Easter celebrations, and lemons and olives for entertaining unexpected guests. Russian monasteries often used these and other eastern goods in the period leading up to and during the reign of Peter the Great. Analysing their account books leads to a revision of the traditional assumptions about the primary consumers of oriental goods in Russia. These consumers, in addition to the royal and aristocratic circles, included monastery estates, as discussed in the paper ‘“Three altyns worth of petroleum…”: Oriental goods in Russia at the second half of the 17th and early 18th century’ by historian Arthur Mustafin of HSE University. Based on his paper, IQ.HSE explores the types of goods that were shipped from the East to Russia in the latter half of the 17th to the early 18th century, including the routes and purposes of these shipments.
How the Telephone Conquered the World. Episode Four: David the Start-up Versus the Corporate Goliath
The history of the invention of telephony reads like a captivating detective novel, but even more intriguing are the events that contributed to the worldwide adoption of this technology. In this series of columns on IQ.HSE, Anton Basov, HSE Faculty of Computer Science editor, discusses how telephones have become an integral part of our everyday life. The fourth episode of the series recounts the story of the fledgling start-up's confrontation with hordes of patent trolls and its subsequent victory in a full-blown corporate war against the largest telecommunications company of the late 19th century.
‘In Search of the Key to the Past’: Students of HSE Art and Design School in Nizhny Novgorod Develop Collection of Souvenirs
The HSE Art and Design School in Nizhny Novgorod, together with the ‘Protected Quarters’ project to revive Nizhny Novgorod’s historical territories, have carried out the ‘Timeless’ creative project, which included a design laboratory and an educational programme. As a result of the creative workshop, students made concepts for souvenir products based on the local identity.
How the Telephone Conquered the World. Episode Three: Connecting People
Today, we can make a telephone call to anyone, anywhere in the world—but this was not always the case. In this series of columns on IQ.HSE, Anton Basov, HSE Faculty of Computer Science editor, discusses how telephones have become an integral part of our everyday life. The third episode focuses on the evolution of telephone connections, the first subscribers, and the history of the telephone directory.