Appels à contributions/Call for Papers | L'histoire depuis les marges

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Appel à contributions

La marge et les historiens : de l’Amérique du Nord aux anciens Empires

Université Paris 13, 18-19 juin 2015, colloque organisé dans le cadre du projet EHDLM (« Écrire l’histoire depuis les marges » http://hdlm.hypotheses.org), Sorbonne Paris Cité

Organisateurs : Claire Bourhis-Mariotti, Hélène Le Dantec-Lowry, Claire Parfait, Matthieu Renault, Marie-Jeanne Rossignol.

Comité scientifique : Christine Chivallon (LAM, CNRS), Elisabeth Cunin (IRD, CNRS), Odile Goerg (Paris Diderot), Ivan Jablonka (Paris 13), Martha S. Jones (University of Michigan) Elika M’Bokolo (EHESS), Mélanie Torrent (Paris Diderot).

Langues du colloque : français et anglais

Conférenciers pléniers : Partha Chatterjee (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta; Columbia University), Odile Goerg (CESSMA, Université Paris Diderot)

Ce colloque clôturera le projet Sorbonne Paris Cité « Écrire l’histoire depuis les marges: le cas des Africains Américains » (hhdlm.hypotheses.org). Ce projet, qui rassemble les universités Paris 13, Paris Diderot et Sorbonne Nouvelle, porte sur le rapport que les Africains Américains entretiennent avec l’histoire depuis le début du XIXe siècle.

Un premier colloque en juin 2014 s’est interrogé sur le travail et l’héritage des historiens noirs qui ont écrit, publié et enseigné entre les années 1830 et 1940, des premiers historiens « amateurs » aux historiens professionnels ségrégués dans des universités et des maisons d’édition spécifiques. Le colloque proposé aujourd’hui vise à élargir le questionnement à d’autres écritures de l’histoire depuis les marges. Il s’agit en outre d’explorer le pouvoir de la « marge » comme lieu d’innovation historique à un moment où le devenir de l’histoire comme discipline semble soulever de profondes interrogations.

En effet, avec ce colloque nous entendons participer aux débats qui parcourent actuellement la discipline historique : en s’intéressant aux « marges », les organisateurs engagent les participants à s’interroger sur les discussions actuelles à propos de l’écriture de l’histoire et ses représentations fictionnelles ou artistiques comme sur les rapports complexes entre histoire professionnelle et mémoires, entre histoire critique et mises en scène muséographiques et commémorations.

La réflexion spécifique que veut entamer ce colloque prend comme angle d’approche la notion de marge prise au sens large, et porte en particulier sur « les historiens aux marges » :

– Qu’est-ce que la marge lorsque l’on travaille sur l’histoire ? La notion de marge peut-elle toujours faire sens à un moment où les notions d’histoire croisée ou connectée et de circulation remplacent celles d’histoire de la nation et de transferts et où les oppositions entre « centre » et « périphérie » sont sans doute moins pertinentes ?

– Qui sont les historiens « à la marge » et de quelles marges s’agit-il ? Dans le cas des premiers historiens africains-américains, celle-ci a plusieurs sens possibles : historiens en marge de la société, mais également en marge des organisations et des institutions au moment où, à la fin du XIXe siècle, l’histoire se professionnalise ; des historiens qui se situent également à l’extérieur des réseaux du monde du livre et de l’édition, ce qui les oblige à avoir recours à des solutions alternatives.

– Quelle histoire écrit-on, à partir de quelles sources, lorsque l’on écrit en dehors des centres politiques, économiques et culturels ou bien dans une autre langue que la langue dominante ?

– Les historiens du présent intègrent-ils les travaux de leurs prédécesseurs qui se situent souvent à la marge de notre vision ?

– L’histoire ayant représenté un domaine presque exclusivement masculin jusqu’à une date relativement récente, comment les historiennes, elles-mêmes marginalisées, ont-elles renouvelé l’écriture de l’histoire ?

– Quelle place pour les historiens qui ne font pas partie des élites sociales et intellectuelles ?

– L’histoire écrite à partir des marges est-elle nécessairement engagée ?

Les organisateurs invitent les chercheurs à proposer des communications sous forme d’études de cas ou de réflexion théorique, sans limite de lieu ou d’époque.

Les résumés (environ 300 mots) en français ou en anglais, accompagnés d’un bref CV (une page maximum) sont à envoyer à l’adresse suivante avant le 15 novembre 2014 :

historyfromthemargins@gmail.com

Call For Papers

As part of the project EHDLM (Writing History from the Margins http://hdlm.hypotheses.org) funded by Sorbonne Paris Cité, the following conference will be held at Université Paris 13, on June 18-19, 2015.

Historians and the Margins: from North America to Former Empires

Organizers: Claire Bourhis-Mariotti, Hélène Le Dantec-Lowry, Claire Parfait, Matthieu Renault, Marie-Jeanne Rossignol

Scientific committee: Christine Chivallon (LAM, CNRS), Elisabeth Cunin (IRD, CNRS), Odile Goerg (Paris Diderot), Ivan Jablonka (Paris 13), Martha S. Jones (University of Michigan) Elika M’Bokolo (EHESS), Mélanie Torrent (Paris Diderot).

Languages of the conference: French and English

Plenary Speakers: Partha Chatterjee (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata; Columbia University), Odile Goerg (CESSMA, Université Paris Diderot)

This event is the final conference of a three-year project funded by Sorbonne Paris Cité and entitled “Writing History from the Margins: the Case of African Americans” (hdlm.hypotheses.org). This project, which involves 3 universities—Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris 13, and Paris Diderot—explores the relationships between African Americans and history. A first conference (University Paris Diderot, June 12-13, 2014) investigated the works and the legacy of black historians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Between the 1830s and 1940s these historians wrote from the margin of American society, both as amateurs, and later as professional historians, who launched journals, organized conferences, and developed institutional tools for their segregated scientific activity. The upcoming conference aims to extend the exploration to other historians who wrote from the margins. We would also like to question the very notion of margins. At a time when many wonder about the future of history as a discipline, we will examine whether margins can be considered as a site of innovation for historical writing.

Indeed, one of the objectives of this conference is to contribute to the ongoing debate about the historical discipline. Participants are invited to use the notion of “margins” to question the writing of history, its fictional and artistic representations, and the links between “professional” history and memory, between scholarly historical writing and the staging of history in museums and through commemorations.

The notion of “margins” will be considered in its widest sense, with a particular focus on historians located at the margins.

Papers may address any of the following issues, whether through theoretical explorations or case studies, without limitation of period or space:

– At a time when connected, entangled, transatlantic, and transnational histories render the opposition between “center” and “periphery” less pertinent, what exactly does it mean to write history from the margins?

– Who are historians “at the margins”? Does one write history differently when doing so from the margins? Is such history necessarily activist?

– What are the challenges involved in writing and publishing history from the margins? In the case of early African American historians, writing from the margins meant, among other things, looking for scattered sources and devising innovative solutions to break into print. How does this apply to other historians who find themselves at the margins of empire (writing colonial history from the point of view of the colonized; writing in languages other than the dominant ones), of gender (renewing historical writing from a gendered perspective in the case of female historians), of social class (writing from outside the socioeconomic and intellectual elites), and of historiography (challenging conventional wisdom; participating in revisionism)? How do we include historians of the past whose works have been forgotten, who still stand at the periphery/the margin of contemporary historians’ vision, and whose legacy often remains invisible?

Please send an abstract (300 words maximum) in English or French and a one-page CV to:

historyfromthemargins@gmail.com no later than November 15, 2014.

As part of the project EHDLM (Writing History from the Margins) funded by the PRES Sorbonne Paris Cité, a conference will be held in Paris, University Paris Diderot, June 12-14 2014, on

Black Historians and the Writing of History in the 19th and early 20th centuries: What Legacy?

Organizers: Marie-Jeanne Rossignol, Claire Bourhis-Mariotti, Hélène Le Dantec-Lowry, Claire Parfait, Mathieu Renault

Scientific committee: Ira Berlin (University of Maryland, College Park), Myriam Cottias (CNRS, CIRESC), Elisabeth Cunin (IRD, CNRS), Pap N’Diaye (Sciences Po), Martha Jones (Michigan), Jean-Paul Lallemand (EHESS, CENA)

Abstracts: 300 words + one-page CV to be sent to blackhistoriansparis2014@gmail.com by November 1, 2013

“History has thrown the colored man out.”

William Wells Brown 1860, in Benjamin Quarles, Black Mosaic 1988, 111

Almost 100 years after The Journal of Negro History was founded by Carter G. Woodson, we would like to reassess the legacy of those black historians who wrote the history of their community between the 1830s and World War II. Through slavery and segregation, self-educated and formally educated black Americans wrote works of history in order to inscribe, or re-inscribe, African Americans in American history. This served a two-fold objective: to make African-Americans proud of their past and to enable them to fight against white prejudice.

Over the past decades, historians have turned to the study of these pioneers, but a number of issues remain to be addressed. At first, before African Americans received doctorates in history or taught history at all-black colleges, activists wrote the first histories of their community (and beyond). We propose to address the following questions: who published these books; how were they distributed, read and received? How can we assess the work of these “amateurs” from a historian’s point of view, at a time when the writing of history was becoming professional in Europe as well as in the United States? What do these publications reveal about the construction of professional history in the nineteenth century when we examine them in relation with other works by Euro-Americans whether working in an academic setting or as independent researchers?

Regarding the more “professional” generation that slowly emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century (Du Bois, Woodson, Logan, and others), a number of questions also remain unanswered. These historians wrote history “from the margins” of the profession, launching journals, organizing conferences and developing institutional tools for their segregated scientific activity. The process of integration was slow and mostly started after the Second World War. Yet one can wonder whether the marginal position of these historians was a hindrance or whether it might also have been an asset. Could it be argued that their use of alternative sources made them pioneers in developing a type of social and cultural history which would later be exemplified by the Annales school in France? If so,the intellectual contribution of the black historians who wrote professional history in the first half of the twentieth century must be re-assessed globally as well as nationally: what does it mean to write history from the margins?

Finally, the work of these early historians must be placed squarely within the longer term historiographical development of African American and American history: African American history emerged as a major field of investigation in American history in the 1970s and 1980s, and, with the rise of Atlantic history in the 1990s and 2000s, it has now become one of the principal preoccupations of American historians. The groundwork had, however, been laid long before in a climate of segregation: the slave trade, US-Haitian relationships, and other key issues were the objects of major studies before the Second World War. How were these books circulated, read and received beyond an educated black public? Are these historians fully recognized for their pioneering work outside of their community, or have they been relegated to the margins of professional historical memory?

William C. Nell

Plenary speakers: Pero Dagbovie, Michigan State University, and Claire Parfait, Université Paris 13

This conference is sponsored by www.sorbonne–paris–cite.fr

And the following research teams : CIRESC/CNRS, LARCA, CREW, CRIDAF/Pléiade.

It will be held at University Paris Diderot www.univ-paris-diderot.fr

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L'histoire depuis les marges – History From the Margins

Archives de catégorie : Appels à contributions/Call for Papers

CFP « La marge et les historiens : de l’Amérique du Nord aux anciens Empires » / “Historians and the Margins: from North America to Former Empires” (University Paris 13, France, June 18-19, 2015)

CFP : Black Historians and the Writing of History in the 19th and early 20th century: What Legacy?