{"id":735,"date":"2013-10-09T12:04:51","date_gmt":"2013-10-09T12:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uniofglos.blog\/?p=537"},"modified":"2024-11-05T14:12:18","modified_gmt":"2024-11-05T14:12:18","slug":"historians-at-the-cheltenham-literature-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/2013\/10\/09\/historians-at-the-cheltenham-literature-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Historians at the Cheltenham Literature Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"silencemacculloch\"<\/a>One of the things I most like about Cheltenham is the Literature Festival, which always attracts many world-famous writers – and often some notorious historians.\u00a0 Whatever your thoughts are on the role of history in the media and so-called \u2018TV historians\u2019, I was really pleased that both Diarmaid MacCulloch and Simon Schama were on the bill for this year\u2019s festival.\u00a0 As an undergraduate history student (quite a while ago now!), I always enjoyed Simon Schama\u2019s history programmes; they inspired me to study history \u2013 and his shows about the Reformation, in which computer imagery recreated the inside of a church in its pre-Reformation colourful and vibrant splendour, really struck my imagination.\u00a0 Diarmaid MacCulloch (a recent entrant into the realm of \u2018TV History\u2019) is well known to early modernists as a core researcher on the Reformation, and as my supervisor\u2019s supervisor, it\u2019s always good to go along to his papers.\u00a0 What was especially interesting about Schama\u2019s and MacCulloch\u2019s talks, and what I\u2019ll write about here, was that both historians spoke about what history means to them, and about their historical methods and motivations.<\/p>\n

Diarmaid MacCulloch discussed his recent book, Silence: a Christian History<\/i><\/a>, which explores the relationship between Christianity and silence, both in terms of Christian worship and also the Church\u2019s silence on various points in its history.\u00a0 MacCulloch argued that religious worship is often about revelation through the senses, so silence is significant \u2013 silence is just as important as things that are said.\u00a0 He spoke further about the impact of this on the historian, for how do you write about absences in the past?\u00a0 The things that aren\u2019t said or spoken about in the source material are still so obviously apparent, for example the silence surrounding homosexual identity \u2013 it may not be mentioned in sources from the past, but that doesn\u2019t mean that it did not exist.<\/p>\n

\"schamacheltlit2013\"<\/a>
My very own snap of Schama …<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Simon Schama discussed his recent book and TV series on the history of the Jews<\/a>, focusing more on his experience researching the book than on the arguments themselves.\u00a0 Schama spoke especially about the fragility of the past, the delicate nature of the source materials we use, the written words which are printed upon papers in archives that can turn to dust (quite literally) in historians\u2019 hands.\u00a0 He spoke about how historians aim to recreate, to breathe life into the people of the past, into people who have gone, who are part of a culture that is different to our own. \u00a0Recreating this culture from the past is what is so fascinating about history \u2013 it\u2019s why historians want to \u2018do\u2019 history.\u00a0 According to Schama the role of the historian is to induce \u2018insightful insomnia\u2019 in a culture which prefers \u2018cooed lullabies\u2019.\u00a0 Meaning that history should unearth ideas and concepts that are unfamiliar, that are different, potentially challenging or even unsettling, rather than ideas that speak to who we are now, or comfortingly confirm our present identities.\u00a0 These are ideas I often discuss with students.<\/p>\n

One theme which united both these talks was what MacCulloch and Schama had to say on the theme of religious history.\u00a0 Both historians emphasised the importance of religion to culture: indeed, religion and culture are intertwined and enmeshed \u2013 and we will fall short of attempting to pick apart and to understand other cultures if we do not appreciate or comprehend the religious cultures of those societies. \u00a0Which again, as a specialist on the Reformation period, is something that I often discuss with students.\u00a0 So, a thought provoking couple of days so far!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the things I most like about Cheltenham is the Literature Festival, which always attracts many world-famous writers – and often some notorious historians.\u00a0 Whatever your thoughts are on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[776,135,136,383,138,775,94],"class_list":["post-735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-anna-french","tag-cheltenham-literature-festival","tag-christianity","tag-early-modern-2","tag-judaism","tag-publications","tag-reformation"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3551,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735\/revisions\/3551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}