History in Conversation

Cultures of Memory in Early Modern England: discussion by Institute of Historical Research

Biology, Brain Theory and History: What, if anything, can historians learn from biology?

Chair: Professor Joanna Bourke (Birkbeck, University of London)

What can history learn from biology is the basic question set out in this session of Dispensations and Conversations. The three panellists all deal with this question according to their own research interests some seeing biology as useful or in need of further integration whilst others believing it intrusive and inaccurate as a historical methodology. The question here relates to the ‘turn to affect’ in the social sciences which has increasingly meant an incorporation of biological and neurological insights to be incorporated into analysis, including historical, of human behaviour.

11 November 2011

What do we mean when talking about ‘memory’ in an historical context? How can we provide evidence that represents an accurate understanding of memory without losing the historical context? Can using ‘memory’ become too broad to serve a useful purpose as a concept? This ‘discussion among historians’, focuses on England in the early modern period, asking and attempting to answer some of the questions posed above. Chaired by Kate Hodgkin from UEL each speaker is given approximately 25 minutes to present their thoughts before the session moved on to a lengthy discussion around the topic.

17 June 2011

Biology, Brain Theory and History: What, if anything, can historians learn from biology?

Professor Roger Cooter (University College London)

Roger Cooter considers whether biology and neurobiology as a ‘more scientifically accurate’ replacement for concepts of consciousness is in truth only a representation which is often politicised. As an historical construct in itself, biology has limitations equal to other concepts used by historians. The problem in this case according to Cooter is that biology as a science tends to be accepted more readily without consideration of the selective and limited character of biology and how it might retrospectively distort our understanding of the past.

11 November 2011

Andy Wood moved the discussion towards archaeology and anthropology as a method for examining early modern memory. Wood is concerned that the focus is too heavily concerned with the memory of ‘elites’ and does not try to rediscover popular memory and its connection to the local region. Citing authors such as Daniel Woolf, Keith Thomas, and Adam Fox (and now in addition Walsham), Wood retells the history of historical study into memory from its conception as collective memory in the inter-war period, the focus on politics of memory in the 1970s, and finally onto memory as identity as expressed in the 1990s. Using an anthropological comparison to Latin America, Wood suggests that memory often views the past as an aspect of the present. Rather than modern perceptive of time evolving and constantly changing, early modern men and women, as also identified in areas of Latin America, experience time as static and largely unchanging but with moments of rupture and change (such as the reformation).

Alexandra Walsham next reflected on an emerging historiography looking into the relationship of memory with landscape and the upheaval in memory caused by the reformation. Walsham argues that the process of remembering was intricately linked to the physical environment and it is for that reason that the reformation was also a period of iconoclasm and erasure of physical monuments that had previously been imbued with a sense of a past that Protestants now wanted forgotten. Religious change acted as a critical juncture in the sixteenth century for memory. The Protestant regimes were trying to obliterate one version of the past with another. In the seventeenth century, Walsham tells us, memory became fragmented between the rival Protestant and Catholic camps and, in addition, an embarrassment concerning early-reformation iconoclasm began to emerge. Writers began to express regret about their lost heritage and realised that much that had been good had also been lost. The struggle to deal with poor relief during the seventeenth century was seen as a direct repercussion from the loss of older forms of relief provided by the church that had been swept away in religious fervour.

Biology, Brain Theory and History: What, if anything, can historians learn from biology?

Dr Lisa Blackman (Goldsmiths, University of London)

Lisa Blackman argues that the persistence of a viewpoint that the humanities and sciences are entirely separate entities is harmful to both disciplines. The reality, Blackman suggests, is that there is a lot of overlap, exchange and collaboration that often goes unnoticed.

11 November 2011

Biology, Brain Theory and History: What, if anything, can historians learn from biology?

Dr Hera Cook (University of Birmingham)

Hera Cook – through her examinations of emotion as an historian – notes how her topic brings up issues over the ability to draw upon evidence that is considered historically sound. Hers is a subject in need of staunch defence as its reliance often on non-factual and chaotic evidence (i.e. human emotion) is all the more difficult to research through traditional historical methods. The concept of biological or bodily emotions is therefore useful (more so than psychoanalysis Cook tells us). Investigating an ‘embodied’ response, say to an emotional shock can be found in historical evidence and can help us better understand socio-economic situations and human experience.

11 November 2011

Protestant Missions, Progressivism and Global Modernity: The YMCA in China, 1895-1935

John Heavens (University of Cambridge)

30 January 2013

Brian Stanley (University of Edinburgh)

10 October 2012