220100 History and Theory. Wesleyan-Bielefeld Dialogue (S) (SoSe 2016)

Historians can rarely do justice to history as an academic practice and a humanist concern unless they place it in a larger theoretical framework. As a course taught together with Professor David Gary Shaw at the Wesleyan University, the USA, History and Theory sets out to respond to this concern through an examination of a leading Bielefeld theoretical historian, that is, Reinhart Koselleck (1923-2006), including his reception in the Anglo-Saxon world and a critique of his Eurocentric views on the practice of history.

The course starts with an introduction to the connections of history and theory, followed by a close reading of a number of Koselleck’s most representative works. The participants then have the opportunity in the first joint session with the Wesleyan students to present their readings of Koselleck to a transatlantic audience via Skype. In the other two joint sessions, the Wesleyan students present their understanding of a number of theoreticians of history including Hayden White. After the joint sessions with the Wesleyan in the first quarter of the semester, we continue our critique of Koselleck’s work in the light of a critique of Eurocentrism (which is also the topic of the annual seminar of the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology (BGHS)). The readings in the last third of the course include an examination of theoretical approaches to history with regard to the question of Eurocentrism and a reading of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe.

We encourage the participants to take part in the BGHS annual seminar which includes a number of keynote lectures and several panels on the various aspects of the question in an interdisciplinary context.