Dr. Michele Alacevich (University of Bologna) At the end of World War II, Italian anti-fascist Carlo Levi published his memoir of one year of internal exile in Southern Italy. In it, Levi describes “that other world, hedged in by custom and sorrow, cut off from History and the State . . . where the peasant lives out his motionless civilization on barren ground in remote poverty”.1 Translated into English in 1947, Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli quickly became a classic—not only for readers interested in narrative and memoirs, but also for anthropologists and social scientists. “Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli” was the way Levi’s peasants signified they excluded from human civilization, part of a world of immutable backwardness.2 As I have shown in my article “Planning Peace: The European Roots of the Post-War Global Development Challenge” (Past & Present, Volume 239, Issue 1, 1 May 2018, pp. 219–264), Levi’s book was only one—though an important one—of the many channels through which the concepts of backwardness and development emerged from the specific context of eastern and south-eastern Europe via southern Italy to global discourse. (As an addendum to my article: I recently stumbled upon a World Bank internal correspondence […]

by the Past & Present editorial team

by the Past & Present editorial team

by the Past & Present editorial team   Programme in Full Monday 3rd September 12.30 -1.15: Lunch 1.15 Welcome and Introduction 1.30 – 3.15 Chair: Matthias Pohlig 1. Sarah Rindlisbacher, ‘Ambassadors of Protestantism: Swiss Reformed Clergymen and their Influence on Foreign Relations with England in the 1650s’ 2. Thomas Grunewald, ‘Pietism and nobility – the reinterpretation of the representative architecture of Wernigerode’ Comment: Sam Fornecker & Sarah Stefanic 3.15 – 3.45: Tea and Coffee 3.45 – 5.30 Chair: Markus Wriedt 1. Nora Epstein, ‘Illustrating Authority: The Creation and Reception of an English Protestant Iconography’ 2. Christina Faraday, “[T]he livelier the counterfeit is, the greater error is engendered’?: Re-assessing ‘liveliness’ in Post-Reformation English visual culture’ Comment: Esther Counsell & Eleanor Barnet Tuesday 4th September 9.15 – 11.00 Chair: Bridget Heal 1. Abdulaziz Al-Salem, Martin Luther (1483-1546) and Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (1703-1792): A Comparative Study through Cultural Materialism 2. Wiebke Voigt, ‘The ‘New Papacy’ vs. the ‘Heavenly Prophets’: Invectivity in the Controversial Pamphlets of Martin Luther and Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt’ Comment: Martin Christ & Thomas Grunewald 11.00 – 11.30: Tea and Coffee 11.30 – 1.15 Chair: Alex Walsham Howard Barlow, ‘Bunbury was not Banbury: Catholic-Protestant relations in pre-Civil War Cheshire, […]

by Esther Lewis (University of Nottingham) At the end of June, a one day conference was held at the Institute of Historical Research which aimed to bring together researchers using the relatively new methodology of Social Network Analysis (SNA) in historical studies. SNA allows the researcher to investigate social structures through the use of networks and graphs and is proving to be a useful tool for social and economic historians. Its use for history is relatively new, but it has been widely used in other humanities and social sciences. The day was organised by two PhD students, Charlie Berry and Esther Lewis, who both felt there was a need for a discussion space regarding SNA within History. Therefore, the day aimed to provide a platform for discussion of the challenges posed by the methodology for historians. There were three panels. The first discussed women and marginal groups. Claire Richardson discussed nineteenth-century prostitutes’ networks in Stamford and Peterborough. Jonathan Blaney and Philip Carter presented preliminary findings on friendship networks between female undergraduates at Royal Holloway in the early twentieth century. Agata Bloch demonstrated that groups who have been traditionally seen as ‘marginal’ within the Portuguese empire had a voice within the […]

Received from Prof. Dejan Djokić (Goldsmiths, London) New research on Yugoslavia in transnational, comparative and global perspectives, 1918-2018 Taking place at Goldsmiths, University of London on the afternoon of 28th November (programme available here), this conference brings together nine academics at different career stages working on the history of Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav region. All the papers have been written specially for the event and will benefit from, and contribute to, a range of methodological and disciplinary approaches: transnational, global, social, intellectual, political and oral history, as well as related disciplines such as memory studies and transitional justice. More specifically, the conference aims to contribute to the scholarship in four main ways: first, each paper is based on latest, original and methodologically innovative research which goes beyond national narratives and frameworks; second, the conference situates the Yugoslav region in a wider context, sensitive to transnational, comparative and global dynamics; third, and following on from this, the papers point out some directions in which scholars of Yugoslavia can contribute to broader discussions within the fields of modern and contemporary history and related disciplines; and fourth, the event should facilitate a dialogue and closer collaboration between early career researchers and established scholars. […]

Past & Present was pleased to support this event and others like it. Applications are welcomed from scholars of at all career stages working on all time periods.

by Josh Allen (Past & Present) On the evening of the 30th May-which was then the warmest day of the year-over fifty people, split roughly evenly between academics, students and interested members of the general public; gathered at the University of Birmingham to hear Prof. Lynda Nead (Birkbeck) present her research on “The Grain of History: Photography and Post-War Time c.1945-55”. The lecture represented the high point of a Past & Present funded workshop on the uses of photographs in history organised by Prof. Elizabeth Edwards (DeMontfort) and Dr. Lucie Ryzova (Birmingham) which ran between the 30th and 31st May 2018 at the University of Birmingham. It is envisaged that the proceedings will be published in future as a supplement of Past & Present offering a bold intervention in the field. After an introduction from the University of Birmingham’s Professor Leslie Brubaker, “in the best tradition of art history lectures… the lights [were then] switched off” and Nead’s keynote lecture commenced. Nead began by contending that through “taking a small number of Picture Post photo-stories on post-war reconstruction as a case study [it is possible to] discuss how time is registered in the taking and printing of photographs in this […]

by the Past & Present editorial team Past & Present is pleased to be supporting “Beyond Truth: Fiction and (Dis)information in the Early Modern World” at the New College, the University of Oxford between the 17th and 18th September 2018. Organised by Dr. Emma Claussen, Thomas Goodwin and Luca Zenobi (all at the University of Oxford) this “two-day interdisciplinary conference, seek[s] to explore the boundaries between truth and falsehood in the early modern period, thinking about disinformation, fiction, and power in tandem.” Featuring twenty papers and two keynote lectures, the programme has now been published; and registration has opened. Full details and further information can be found on the conference website. In addition to sponsorship from Past & Present this event is also supported by the Royal Historical Society, the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Oxford and the Ludwig Research Fund for the Humanities at New College, Oxford. Past & Present is pleased to support this event and others like it. Applications are welcomed from scholars of at all career stages working on all time periods.

by the Past & Present editorial team Dr. Laura Eastlake and Dr. Andrew McInnes the organisers of Substance Use and Abuse in the Long Nineteenth Century at Edge Hill University (13th-14th September 2018) have announced a creative competition in the run up to the event. The competition Your Research in One Image will be judged by a panel led by Stephen Whittle the Principal Manager of The Atkinson Southport, with whom Eastlake and McInnes are collaborating to mount an exhibition related to themes explored in the conference. Past & Present has been advised that the details of the competition are as follows: We are inviting submissions of creative works which explore any aspect of nineteenth-century substance use and abuse. -Photography, painting, digital art, mixed media, posters? -Still lives of drug paraphernalia? -Microscopic images of chemical compounds -Mapping nineteenth-century drug use? -A sculpture featuring Sherlock Holmes’s 243 types of tobacco ash? This competition is open to undergraduate and postgraduate students, lecturers and researchers, and members of the public. Winners will be announced and prizes awarded at the conference, 13th – 14th September 2018 at Edge Hill University. First prize: £100 Deadline for entries: 17th August 2018 Competition entry forms can be downloaded here, along with the […]