Natalie Zemon Davis and Amitav Ghosh: Storytelling and the Global Past

John-Paul Ghobrial (History, Churchill College)

This public lecture will bring together the prize-winning historian Natalie Zemon Davis and the celebrated novelist Amitav Ghosh to reflect on prevailing approaches to writing about the global past. Masterful storytellers in their own right, both speakers have experimented in novel, poignant, and bold ways with several of the key questions facing global historians today. In doing so, they have also embraced the productive tension at the boundaries of history and fiction. The event, therefore, is intended as much as a reflection on global history as an opportunity to consider wider issues of narrative, plausibility, and authenticity in historical writing in its myriad forms. In doing so, it will encourage the audience and participants to think together about the limits and opportunities facing historians and novelists, respectively, in their attempts to depict the global past.