 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Resources > Intellectual History |
|
Web Sites: American Historical Association |
|
American Intellectual History of the 20th Century--Discipline Profile "…Intellectual
History is not a whole. It has no governing problematique. Its practitioners
share no sense of common subjects, methods, and conceptual strategies.
At one extreme they examine the systems of philosophers; at the
other they examine the rituals of illiterates. But their perspectives
can be classified from "high" to "low," and
one can imagine a vertical spectrum in which subjects shade off
into one another, passing through four main categories: the history
of ideas (the study of systematic thought, usually in philosophical
treatises); intellectual history proper (the study of informal thought,
climates of opinion, and literary movements); the social history
of ideas (the study of ideologies and idea diffusion); and cultural
history (the study of culture in the anthropological sense, including
world views and collective mentalities.)" Darnton, Robert. "Intellectual and Cultural History." In The Past Before Us: Contemporary Historical Writing in the United States, ed. Michael Kammen. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980. Intellectual historians examine: "Institutions involved in the creation and dissemination of knowledge; Public figures influential in the discourse of their times; and concepts, ideas, and ideologies that have played significant roles in shaping public discourse…"
|