History and Theory

In this episode, Alex and James sit down with Rob and Diego to discuss Guy Debord's 'The Society of the Spectacle' (Michigan: Black and Red, 1970). Expect a debate on Debord's theories of time and history, about a definition of the 'Spectacle', and whether Debord's imagined communist society could function without commodities. Read the text in full, or follow specific theses while listening, here . History and Theory · Episode 3: A discussion of Guy Debord Image credit:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Internationale_situationniste_nº1.jpg

In today's episode we are talking to Hannes Grandits, Professor for Southeastern European History at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. His research on the history of the former Yugoslav-countries spans from the early 19th to the late 20th century. A recurrent theme in his research are different forms of power structures in the region, such as family networks or systems of social security, which he addresses with methods of historical anthropology. Recently, he published the edited volume "Local Dimensions of the Second World War in Southeastern Europe".  The book's focus is on the reshaping of ethnic and religious groups in wartime, on the "top-down" and "bottom-up" dynamics of mass violence, and on the local dimensions of the Holocaust, trying to break with  national narratives and "top-down" political and military histories. We talked to him about Maria Todorova's concept of "Balkanism, first outlined in "Imagining the ...

Hello and welcome to the premier of the History and Theory Podcast - a student-led project that aims to make historical theory easy and accessible. In each episode we talk to a different historian about their theoretical background, the historical practice and the significance of history within society. For the first episode, we invited Sebastian Conrad, head of the "Centre for Global History" at Freie Universität in Berlin. As a historian he has published widely on Japanese history, coming from a background of postcolonial history. From there he made the jump to the field of global history, and in 2013 published his book  Global History. An Introduction  (original title: Globalgeschichte. Eine Einführung, Munich 2013). In this episode we'll be discussing two of his Sebastian's articles: first, "Enlightenment and Global History. A historiographical critique", published in the American Historical Review in 2012, and second, "Nothing is the way it should ...