There is a compulsion that anyone who has ever done historical research has felt. A need to chase down the loose ends, to follow the documentary trail as far as it will go. I like research snacking – using spare time or setting aside short periods to look at new materials every day, even when […]
Read more "Of Rabbits, Hats, and Holes"Julie Langois, femme Vigneux told investigators in 1846 that she had called on the healing services of Jerôme Nicolas Lenfant to treat the ringworm her two children were suffering from. Lenfant’s cure included putting boiled onions on the children’s heads, rubbing them with butter, and blowing in their ears. Although this method had nothing in […]
Read more "nonsense matters"I want to talk about one mistake I think it is possible to make about the kinds of ‘creative’ approaches to writing history is that the #storypast group have discussed, and which will hopefully be addressed by the ‘Creative Histories’ event in Bristol in July 2017. This error is to think that talk of history […]
Read more "Plot and History"One thing that I think blogging can usefully do that historians don’t often do in other, more formal writing spaces is think about the basics of writing style in history. It’s actually the kind of thing that many of us – I suspect – do all the time in the pub, over coffee, or even […]
Read more "Style Notes: Robert Darnton"Why would I want to do translation work? The arguments against are pretty powerful. It’s a distraction from the ‘real’ work I do, the work of teaching and research. And it’s a pain. Long, tedious, and often frustrating. There are few things worse than facing the conventions of another language and realizing there is no […]
Read more "Why translate?"I recently wrote a thing for the journal Past & Present, who have been funding me for the past year. It’s a virtual issue of articles that have appeared in the journal on the theme of anthropology and folklore, with an introduction I wrote about how I think the field has developed, and the place of […]
Read more "Lore School"In 1916, one of the better-known fortune-tellers and magicians of Paris was sent to prison for fraud. The newspapers were peppered with details: his pseudonyms, some of his more bizarre practices, hints at his clientele. Journalists – much like their descendants today – took great pleasure in mocking the credulity of modern Paris, and revelled […]
Read more "Gistory"Some of our enduring assumptions about the history of witchcraft in Europe after the ‘witch craze’ need busting. I’m hardly the first to notice this. In fact, several historians have written about how pervasive and inaccurate it is to think that secularization created the scepticism that made Europeans – and especially elites – realize that […]
Read more "‘A Most Certain, Strange, and true Discovery’: Witches in Modern France"(This is the fifth and final post I have written about the Modern British Studies Conference in Birmingham in July. For an overview of the posts, see here: http://wp.me/p3QdQ9-3c) This post deals with what may well be the most important aspect the challenging and exciting discussions at MBS2015, but it i most likely the one where I […]
Read more "The Here and Now"(This is the fourth of five posts I have written about the Modern British Studies Conference in Birmingham in July. For an overview of the posts, see here: http://wp.me/p3QdQ9-3c) If the past is a foreign country, most of the guide books are written by people who have never been to the places they describe. Imagination […]
Read more "Creative History"
Will Pooley 