Back to Search Results | New search
Course books   Evaluation

How is history invented? Which is to say (invoking an etymologically sublated sense of "invent"), how is the past both "made" and "discovered"? This course, co-taught by a historian of science and a literary critic, explores the borderlands between the archive and the imagination. We will consider the shape of historical knowledge and also the texture of historical experience, the feeling of and for the past. Readings will canvass the relevant bodies of philosophy, theory, and historiography, as well as genres such as the historical novel and poetic imitation. Writing assignments will experiment in the practices of historical invention.